Episode 32 - IPMS SMW 2026 Telford Launch & Jon Bryon

[00:00:02] Welcome to Episode 32 of Beyond The Box Art and we are joined by Jon Bryon and the IPMS UK Executive Team to launch Scale Model World 2026.

[00:00:47] Your host as usual is Brownie with his co-hosts Stan, Neves, Balders and Shane. Hi Benchmates and welcome to Episode 32 of Beyond The Box Art. First of all, can I say a huge thank you for the incredible response to the Ukraine Community Support Initiative and to Episode 31.

[00:01:12] Your messages, emails and comments have genuinely been overwhelming and it's heartening to know that together our amazing modern community can really make a difference to those who need our support the most at the moment. Now then, have we got a show lined up for you in this episode. Joining us is a man who needs absolutely no introduction, although we're going to give him one anyway. Yes, Jon Bryon is back. And before you all start checking your podcast app thinking you've missed an episode, no, you heard that absolutely right.

[00:01:41] Jon Bryon is making his first appearance on Beyond The Box Art. And if that's left you scratching your head, don't worry, we'll explain everything during our conversation. As if that wasn't enough, we're delighted to welcome IPMS UK President Rich Middleton back to the show along with the new Scale Model World show manager Jon Tapsall. We'll be joining us to talk about this year's Scale Model World at Telford. We'll be finding out what's in store for the biggest scale modeling event in the world and what's new for 2026.

[00:02:08] Of course, we've also got another packed edition of the Stash Inflation Report bringing you the latest releases from across the modeling world. So wherever you're listening, whether you're at the bench, in the workshop, out walking the dog or simply trying to justify just one more kit to the other half. Grab your brew, settle back and let's spend the next couple of hours enjoying the hobby we all love. This is episode 32 of Beyond The Box Art and it starts now.

[00:02:43] Right then, for this episode, I'm joined by Shane. How's it going, Benchmates? Baldurs. Bonjour, Benchmates. Dan. Hello, Benchmates. And from Mexico, Nevs. Hola, everybody. And we're also joined by John Bryan. Good evening. What beautiful weather we're having. Isn't it just since we're all sweating? One of the hottest days in the year so far. Speak for yourself. Yes. What temperature have you got? I don't know, but I'm not that hot. Oh, fair enough.

[00:03:13] We're also joined by John Tapsulse, manager for Scale Model World. Good evening. Okay, so let's start off like we normally do with what we've got on the benches. So let's start off with Baldurs before he mounts. I've got my annual build competition on, but I can't do nothing. I can't believe it or not, the room's that hot. It's solidifying filler before I can even get to work it. It's just cooking it. I've tried airbrushing and literally I'm getting dust out the cap because it's just atomizing.

[00:03:43] The forecast at the moment is Saturday. It's going to be significantly cooler. So plan, save it back for then. Well, it all depends. If I make it to Saturday because 30 is going to be the scorcher. I think it's about 35, 36 here on Thursday. From what I've seen from the computer modeling for us, because obviously you live just down the road from me, literally, it's 37. It looks like I'm working in the bathtub then. I'm going to run a cold bath, I think, and just sit in there with a little laptop tray across the bath and just working there all day. Fully clothed, of course.

[00:04:13] I don't want to give people that imagination of, you know. It's too late. I've just placed an order for some mine bleach. But yeah, it's just, I'm contemplating on spending big money on aircon for this house because I think it needs it. Yeah. This is something that a lot of people outside of the UK don't realize is most of our houses are built for insulation for bad winters. Absolutely fantastic. But now we're getting scorching summers and we're getting temperatures we've never seen in the UK before.

[00:04:40] We're due to hit, I think, the UK record of 40.2 degrees to actually break that this week. Yeah. The problem is that they've pulled cavity wall insulation in to keep them warm in winter. Yeah. Not during summer because the houses can't breathe. So that's why you feel like Alec Guinness and the Bridge of the River Kwai when he's locked in the tin box. Because that's how I feel right at this moment in time. Well, that's painted a lovely picture for our bench mates. So with that, what have you been spending your cash on? Other than air conditioning.

[00:05:10] Modeling wise, absolutely nothing. Unfortunately, money's gone into the pond again. So I've just dropped more money into that. I'm losing an inch a day at the minute in water. I thought it was one about your weight. No, no. From evaporation. It's sort of, I need to put more oxygen in. Yeah. Fair enough. But that's what happens when you've got two expensive hobbies, model making and koi fish. So you've got to spread the love. And the wife doesn't cast as a hobby then? Well, to be honest, she's now into it. After 11 years of us being together, she's now into model making.

[00:05:40] So she's actually built Boba Fett and Darth Vader. She's done more than you? Eh, no. I've done one a month so far. I've done six. That's pretty good going for me, considering last year was one. Still haven't seen any pictures on the Benchmicks page. Because they're in the car. Because when you asked for them, my other half got called into work. And it's been in work for six days straight. So... They've probably melted. I've probably got a pile of a black puddle of what was a Zaxby Capri.

[00:06:08] A silver puddle of what was an Aston Martin DB5. And a plastic iceberg that was once a PLA Type 55 destroyer. So yeah, I probably have got puddles. Oh, this is going down soon. I wouldn't believe it. And I was like, she's took the car. Because it was an early call. So she took the car. And I was like... Brownie wanted me to take pictures of my finished models. And I was like, they're in the car. And then when I looked at the weather report and I thought, they're not coming back. They are going to be melted. Joy. Well, on that cheerful note. Shane.

[00:06:38] Well, in fact, let's go to Nev's in case of some core dropped from Mexico. What have you been working on other than your tan? Oh, his margarita gets warm. Well, as you've alluded to there, Brownie, obviously for last week, there's been nothing on my bench. As the bench is four and a half thousand miles away. Apart from that, it is still the shagulls. I've moved on from the midsection finally. I'm on the after section of the superstructure. So progress has been made ever so slowly.

[00:07:04] But we did move our club build competition to Gerai. So whether I can get it finished in time for that, who knows. But that's what I was working on before I came on here. Fair enough. And what have you been spending your cash on other than margaritas? Yeah, other than tequila and empananas. Not very much, Fiona. Not find any modelling shops where you are? No, I don't think it's a particular big thing in the Riviera Maya. Probably because of the weather. Yes, I know that to be a lie. I know you've spent money. Oh.

[00:07:35] Controversial. Well, the only money I've spent, at least money that's been spent in the future, with Wongi. Yeah, here we go. So, to be quite frank, I can't remember what I've ordered off him either. I do, because he showed me. All I will say is, he sent me a message the other night and he said, there's a yard sale or some clearance somewhere in Hong Kong. Tell me your ships are all £3 each. So, I gave him a budget. I said, okay, this you can do for the store. And it closely blew the budget.

[00:08:05] And he showed me a big cardboard box full of all kinds of ships. I can't even tell you which ones there were, because there's just that many in front. So, I know there will be a box coming in the air freight sometime. So, I'll be able to tell you in the next recording what I've been ordering. But, to be fair, the majority of that is full of business instead. So, it's not going in my personal stuff. That's what he says at the moment. You can blame me, because one guy messaged me and said that this shop was shutting down. And it was like, oh, he won 350th scale ships.

[00:08:34] He went, no, 1,700th. I saw a message from Nevs. I said, I'm sure Nevs will have them. Yeah, I mean, I gave him a shopping list. And he said, oh yeah, I'll get back to you. And he got back to me. And he said, they don't have a single thing off his shopping list. They have everything booked. So, we'll see. Yeah, it was a bit strange. We'll see what it comes back with. Obviously, I was in the Mexican heat. But I honestly can't tell you what he's for. Fair enough. Okay then, Shane.

[00:09:04] What have you got on the bench? Well, I have finished Jersey Jerk. So, that is just vacated the bench. And as per the last episode, I had no self-control whatsoever. And bought a Challenger tank, which has made its way straight onto the bench. I started it last night. But yeah, I haven't had a chance to do anything today. It's been very busy. What scale did you get in the end? I went for 35th. I went for the Tamiya. Desertized. Yeah, really, really chuffed with it.

[00:09:33] And yeah, it's definitely a shift in what I'm used to. But so far, so good. Looking forward to getting some paint down on it. We need the weather to change for that. But yeah, really happy with it. What aftermarket have you spent on it so far? Here we go. No, I haven't spent anything on it yet. Not yet. But I have been looking at a few barrels. So, we'll see. Because as we know, resistance is futile. But I have yet to decide which one I'm going to go for. I think I'm going to... I know we talked about tracks before.

[00:10:02] But I think I'm going to probably just leave the ones out of the kit at the moment. Because like you guys said, you can see so little of it. I don't think it'll be a worthwhile addition just yet. But yeah, so far, so good. Have you thought how you're going to display it yet? I will put it on a base. I was talking to 3D Gizmo. They've got some really awesome bases that they can print out. So, I was talking to them a little port. So, if I don't make my own scratch-built base, then I shall see what they've got to offer as well. I was so impressed with some of their options at Gizmo.

[00:10:31] I don't know if Dan saw them, but yeah, they were really cool. I did, mate. Yeah, I did. So, Dan's obviously sending you a shopping list of what you need to buy now for the kit. We may have been conversing, but I can leave a confirm or deny to Mrs. Cowey on that. I'll spend your money for you all day long, mate. Don't you worry about that. Yeah, absolutely. Fair enough. Okay, and are you spending on anything other than the tank? Well, yes.

[00:10:55] Did I say last episode I was thinking about getting some Mr. Surfacer 1500 and some leveling thinners and bits and bobs like that. So, I spoke to Rob Brooks and got those bits delivered very kindly. So, yeah, I've got some primer. I think I've said before, I normally paint exclusively in Vallejo, but I've been really struggling with their primers of late. They've got a bit gloopy. So, I thought I'd try something a bit different. So, I've gone down the Mr. Surfacer route. Let me see how we get on with that.

[00:11:23] I normally go 50-50, Mr. Surfacer 1500 and Mr. Levington. Yeah, that's what's being recommended. So, that's what I shall be doing. Never had a problem. No, everyone I've spoken to, I've spoken to quite a few people at the last couple of shows and they've all said the same. And obviously you guys as well. And a couple of messages from my listeners as well. So, thanks for the recommendation, guys. And, yeah, looking forward to spraying that in hopefully a not-too-distant future. In addition to that, obviously the boys have had a bit of a splurge when we were at the model show.

[00:11:52] I'm just going to go and see what I can find, Daddy. Yeah, yeah, yeah, no problem. I've bought a model. Great. But then to be fair to Edward, he sat there at Littleport on the painting table. And with a couple of the guys from the Horn Church group. And they literally sat there for the majority of the day and built the thing. So, he got a BF 109. Yeah, he started it and finished it near enough on the day. So, they were kept well entertained. And someone got an award at the last show you went to? Yeah, well, I didn't. I know you didn't.

[00:12:22] Yeah, so Jacob got the best junior prize, which he was incredibly happy with. He was so happy. There were some amazing models on show. And there was a lot more juniors than normal. But, yeah, he got first place for his 1 for 4th scale Gundam Leo, which is from the Gundam Wing anime. So, yeah, he was really happy. Fair play to him. I'm really jealous. Yes. And you were at the show with us to Brazil, I believe. Indeed.

[00:12:52] Yes, indeed. In fact, it was his club show. It was, yeah. But the first time ever, I think I mentioned before, we had the Gundam Sig there as well for the first time. So, we took the guys on tour. One of the other guys, Frank from the Sig, he had this beautiful Gundam bust on the table that was painted in like a pearlescent style paint, which was the SMS color shift. And it just looked awesome. That sort of purple, blue, greens. It was, yeah, it was really well received.

[00:13:20] He got so many nice comments throughout the whole show. And, yeah, he got, I think, second place in the sci-fi category as well. So, well done, everyone. Well done, all the winners, actually, because there were some, yeah, just ridiculously good models for the show. But, yeah, you'll find that on their Facebook page. Yeah. They look really good. So, Mr. Brazil, you've recovered from the show. How did it go for you? Yeah, just about. Very, very long day. It was a long weekend, that is. It basically swallows the whole thing. Family has to go on the back burner.

[00:13:49] But they did come, which I'm so proud and happy. But overall, for the show, we had our little debrief and we had our meeting the other night. And all of the numbers are up on last year. And last year's numbers were up on the year before we had the most juniors through the door. Well, juniors were free with a paying adult. And we know because everyone gets a ticket so you can come in and out. So we were up overall in attendance, up on juniors.

[00:14:19] We had the most juniors in contention, as Shane mentioned, for the junior trophy. The make and take table, we've actually run out of some of the kits that we had now. They've all gone. They just got absolutely blitzed. Every time I walked past the table, there was at least three kids sitting there building models, which is just like, that's what you want to see, isn't it?

[00:14:43] I saw so many kids as well with model kits under their arms and including my youngest son, who came home with a Tamiya T-Rex dinosaur, which was nine pounds of Tamiya goodness in a box. But also he is obsessed with Top Gun Maverick. And I ended up buying something that goes whoosh.

[00:15:13] It's a F-A-18C Hornet Wings 94 at Sugi Independence from Hasegawa in 170 seconds ago. So if any of you lot know what any of that means, yeah, it hasn't got a propeller and it doesn't go squeeze bang blow. So I don't really know what it is. How old is he? He is 11. Right. Yeah, I was building that when I was 11. It's fine. It's good care. Yeah. So I don't know if he'll be building all of it. It's probably going to need some assistance from me, which is what it's all about.

[00:15:43] So yeah, I'm so happy. And he won four prizes on the Tombola. Three of them were model kits as well. A 72nd Stoomgesche. Honestly, every single model show I go to, you do it. You buy your raffle ticket. I've won sweet FA. And he buys two tickets and wins four prizes. He's one after the other. So yeah, he's coming with me to all of them now. But yeah, we were so happy. Everyone was happy as a club. I would say we did have a couple of medical emergencies.

[00:16:12] One of them was a chap who hadn't actually eaten anything and ended up not feeling very well at all. And funny enough, with me talking about Telford and if you are feeling a bit overwhelmed or a bit unwell when you fancy a sit down, have a chat with a club or SIG and they'll quite happily invite you around the table to sit down. That is exactly what this chap did. And found a seat and didn't feel quite well. We got medical staff over and it was all sorted.

[00:16:41] And got that one wrapped up, which was all good. Bumped into Mr. Skiffins, who was there with the Models for Heroes guys. That was a nice surprise. Oh, fantastic. Yeah, because I didn't actually know he was coming. So we had a good old chat. And I will just mention, talking about juniors, is young Rex, aged 12, who is a member of the US Army Air Forces in Europe Special Interest Group. And he just finished it before the show.

[00:17:10] It's a small diorama or vignette of a C-47 Skytrain. And it's got all of the Screaming Eagles 101st Airborne paratrooper figures, including one that he's depicted as Captain Winters with his foot on a wooden ammo crate, giving the guys the final pep talk before they board. And honestly, I can't quite believe that a 12-year-old is capable of that because I was

[00:17:35] not doing anything anywhere near that quality at the age of 12. So I have said to him, Rex is, I believe, a junior IPMS member. And I said, you have to enter that into the junior comp at the Nationals because that is absolutely fantastic. So congratulations and well done, Rex. It was very good. It was awesome. I had a good look at that. And we're speaking to him at the Shuttleworth show as well. Yeah. Yeah. You know what? Shout out because that standard is just ridiculous. Fair play.

[00:18:05] But just the angles that he did it, that he got the angles just right on the base. It was presented really nice and the figures were painted beautifully. They were in a sort of a rough arc around the rear door. He just got it. It was just beautiful. It was weathered lovely as well. It really was. Which actually was the C-47 that Major Dick Winters, or it would have been Captain Winters,

[00:18:33] I think, by then on D-Day. It was his actual aircraft. So well done, Rex. Good to see. Purchase-wise, I did pick up a couple more of my favorite 148 Tamiya armor kits. And I also got from the lady at East Anglia Books, the Mushroom Publications Assembly Ships of the Mighty Eighth, which is well and truly my groove. So very happy with that. And yeah, that's pretty much it for me with regards to purchases.

[00:19:02] I have discussed this with Mr. Boulders about possibly making an order for the new Edward P51B in 30 seconds, Gail, because that looks awesome with the 3D bits and pieces in there. I still can't get over that undercarriage, Betty. It's incredible, isn't it? All the pipes, everything in one piece. It's incredible. I just want to get the thing in my hands and see it for real.

[00:19:25] And I believe that the Czech fella, Jan Zijarski, who wrote the bloody hundredth book, has actually written the book for that that comes with the limited edition kit as well, or the introduction version of the kit. So I should definitely, because he comes to Thorpe Abbots quite regularly, so I'll take my copy there and get him to sign that. But yeah, that's it for me. I haven't really done much bench-wise, obviously, because it's been show fever for the past few weeks.

[00:19:49] But now that we're done, in anticipation of ordering the 32nd scale Edward P51, I have got the Tamiya 32nd P51D slash K and took it out to sniff the plastic as you do. And within a few hours, the engine is built. It fell together. But it's beautiful. God, those Tamiya kits are so lovely. They really are.

[00:20:13] Well, you made a good job of that air-fix spitfire, mate, because I saw that on your table underneath that little badge that you talked about in the last episode. Thanks, mate. Yeah, not bad for my first spitfire in about 30 years. That's all right, isn't it? Yeah, it would have been like 10 days as well. 10-day turnaround. It was actually a little bit less than that because I ordered it and the seller didn't send it for six days and I was really starting to sweat. And that was before this hot weather came. But I got it done and literally I put the mat coat on it. We come home from setting the show up on the Saturday.

[00:20:41] I came home and put the mat coat on it that evening and said to my missus, I hope this is dry for a right to box up. When I opened the box, when we got to the show, it just stunk of levelling thinner and all the stuff that had gone on there. So, yeah, no, it was great. Really happy with that. Really happy. There should be some news, Dan, regarding the P51 by Friday. There's just a bit of an issue in Europe at the minute regarding the currency. Right, okay.

[00:21:08] Because the euro is fluctuating really, really badly at the minute and are struggling to try and get a definitive price. And Dan, you do realise an F18 does do suck-squeeze-bang-blow. Of course it does. Yeah, I meant pistons. That's what I meant. Right. Well, for a rare occurrence, I've got some news. I've been building. Look at this thing. Stand silence. Ah, yes. Wasn't it something else to bearish combat? That does, doesn't it?

[00:21:37] But it near enough is. Yeah. Right, Brownie, you better tell the listeners what it is because they can't see. I know they can't see. I will put some photographs on the Benchmates page as it's progressing in the build. It is a 1-13th scale AR3 Mark 9 Evo drone. The company that I work for manufactures reconnaissance platforms. And they decided to celebrate their 25th anniversary. They gave everyone a kit, but it was a 3D printed model.

[00:22:08] But instead of it being on ordinary 3D printed, what do you call them? Supports? Supports, yeah. It was actually moulded as if it was an injection moulded kit. So it was on run sprues. Really, really weird. Unusual scale as well of 1 to 13th. Yeah. Why couldn't they don't like 1 twelfth? Because, yeah, 1-13th just... Yeah, I know. At least we can say there's a 1-13th scale kit now. And people go, no, there's no such thing. No, there is. There is.

[00:22:37] There's a 1-13th scale kit. It's the first one of its kind, but... Probably be the only one of its kind as well. But anyway, yeah, hopefully get this one done, knocked out the park quite quickly. And I'm intending to put it on a little base and bring it to Telford. I'm planning ahead for already. The other thing that is on the bench is on the pile of shame. And I'm going to go into rant mode. I'm stretching my headset off. Treating myself to the new extra decal sheet X32077.

[00:23:06] The Gloucester Meteor F8 for the new Revell kit. Absolutely fantastic. Nice selection of schemes in there. Great. Get the decals out to have a quick look as you do. And they're printed as per usual by Microscale. But there's a cut issue with the actual alignment. As in, now I don't know who'll be able to see. I'll pick this up on the camera. But the red triangles aren't set on the yellow base properly. The black triangles aren't set on the yellow base properly. Yeah, they are.

[00:23:35] There's out of registration all over the shot. The blue checkers. The blue doesn't look squared. Oh yeah, the blue checkers don't look squared. It looks like there's a bit of a rough edge to the outer lines. There's rough edges all over them. Left, right and centre. Even the squadron leader pennants on the sheet are not actually aligned properly. You can see on the edge. Are these new brownie? Yep. Brown spanking new. And there's two sheets in the pack.

[00:24:05] And it's exactly the same on the second sheet. There's alignment issues on there as well. So I emailed Hannance. And to be fair, they actually sent me a replacement sheet straight away. And I said, look, you've got a quality issue here, guys. You need to actually look at this. And the second sheet they sent was even worse than the first. Oh no. And they obviously didn't even bother to check it. And I emailed them back and said, look guys, second sheet's worse than the first one. You've got a serious problem.

[00:24:32] I suggest you stop sending them out or do something on quality control on this. And I said, wouldn't mind having a conversation with you on the show about it. And absolutely nothing back from them. No email to say about anything about them. They've got an issue or they acknowledge they've got an issue, et cetera. So who makes that? They're not cartographed, surely. No, they're micro scale in the States. Is it a rush job? Is it an oversight? Well, I wouldn't say it was a rush job. A reference that they've used?

[00:24:59] Because it seems a pretty big, it's not shrunk back when they've printed it. Because it's not like screen printed or anything like that, is it? Oh, because those are, hold on if you can see. Look, Chris, that's 74 squadron. Yeah. For the English electric lightning. And they're not meant to overlap or something like that. So you lose. No, no, no. And it's not just one color that's out. It's multiple colors. It's about four of the five colors or the primary colors on there are out of register.

[00:25:28] I wonder if the printer alignment's been out and it's either something's been jammed and they pulled it and it's pulled the heads and the heads have shifted. Yeah. But as a case of, if you're looking for some aftermarket decals for your meteor, I would suggest holding off until this issue's resolved. Because unfortunately, as it is, I've now got two full sheets and neither are usable. Well, they are going to. People are going to be.

[00:25:56] Because nearly everyone that I spoke to who was excited about that kit said, oh, I can't wait for the aftermarket decals that are going to come out for it. They come out and they're awful. That's not good. Exactly. And it's not exactly a rush job because the kit first came out last November. Well, yeah, it's been on the horizon for a while. Extra Decal brought out their sheet for the Hunter, which isn't out yet. Was it the start of the year? The 132nd Hunter? No. No.

[00:26:24] It was the end of last year because they preempted it because it was supposed to be out last year, but they held off and delayed it. And I think that's why they've done it. A bit unusual in all honesty, because I've used tons. Well, I didn't say tons, like that's a thing. Yeah. But I've used a lot of extra decals and I've never had any issues with them. I've never had a problem before. You know, I've been buying them for 30 odd years plus. Never had an issue with it. And this is the first time. And it was just so different.

[00:26:52] Are they subbing the production of them out to someone else, maybe? No idea. But anyway, it's just a word of warning before you spend your hard earned cash on those sheets at the moment. I wouldn't really suggest having a look at it rather than doing it mail order, because you may be very disappointed, unfortunately. Or just put on your order note, because usually when you buy something, you can add a note to the order. Please, can you check and make sure that the decals are in register? It might be worth just doing that, mightn't it? They sent a replacement sheet out to replace one that was out of a register and they obviously

[00:27:22] didn't even check that one, so. No. Oh, God. It's a bit odd as well, Brownie. They've just done Gloucester Meta F8 collection. There's no part one to it. There's no, they're not, looks like they're not going to do anymore. Considering how many explosions are Gloucester Meteors. Yeah. Especially in the RAF. Plus you've got all the export versions. Mm-hmm. So why is he not going down that route? Because I think near enough heavy air force have the flaming Gloucester Meteor. Yeah. Especially the Mark VIII. Yeah.

[00:27:51] But yeah, it's, yeah. To sell disappointed is an understatement. It really is. You should see if you can get John Tabiner to, because he did a load of 148 scale decals for F8s, back for the 148 scale airfix kit under the Marmaduke label. Have you asked him if you'll do any in 1.32? Yeah. I thought he might have done. He's talking about it. Okay. Rant over. Back to normality. I've spent absolutely nothing. So saving myself up for 12. And you'll still buy nothing?

[00:28:21] That's a long way away. I know. It's a few months away. Pardon? I know. And you'll still buy nothing? Well, I didn't hardly buy anything else. I did actually. Books. Exactly. Because you couldn't get off the table. Yeah, quite. Change of plan for that this year. Anyway. So with that, let's go to JT, Mr. John Tapsall. Welcome to the show. Thank you very much. What do you normally build? Because obviously we haven't had the pleasure of your company before. And what are you working on at the moment?

[00:28:51] What do I build? I started building models when I was about seven or eight years old. And I've never stopped since. Obviously, early days, I built a bit of everything. Gradually settled onto 135th scale armor. Did that for 30 plus years. For the past 10 years, I've built almost exclusively 148th scale armor. At the moment, ironically, I'm doing a bit of 135th scale again.

[00:29:20] I have, I'm sure you'll be familiar with it. Tamiya released many years ago an M151 Jeep. They call it a MUT. US forces never called it a MUT. It's always been a Jeep to them. MUT was a Ford sales pitch as far as I'm aware. And they did, Tamiya did a version with the tow missile launcher on it. And I came across some nice photos of one of these vehicles in Marine Corps service

[00:29:45] on an exercise in Norway in the mid-1980s in a very nice Arctic camouflage. Now, I've used that Arctic camouflage on an Amtrak and 105mm howitzer. So it was obvious that I was going to do it with the Jeep as well. Now, Tamiya's kit is nice for its period when it was released, early 80s. By the mid-80s, there'd been various upgrades to the vehicle. And I'm trying to depict those.

[00:30:14] So there are changes around it. And then, like an idiot, I came across some photos of another M151 tow missile Jeep. This one based on the M151A1, the earlier vehicle that Tamiya released in, I think, 2013. So it's the earlier version of the M151. Now, you occasionally see pictures of them in US Army service, but they're really sort of demonstration and test images.

[00:30:44] I've never seen a photo of them actually in unit service. But lo and behold, all the tow jeeps used by Luxembourg were M151A1s. So I thought, oh, that's a good idea. I'll build one of those because it's slightly different. And then I thought, but there's actually two Jeeps in the system because you've got the missile launch Jeep and then you've got the ammunition reload Jeep.

[00:31:11] So by the time I finished working on one Jeep, I was working on three Jeeps. So they're all sat on my bench at the moment. Various stages of painting and weathering. I will get them finished. I haven't done much on them in the last three or four weeks. And then I came across pictures of a dune buggy with a tow launcher on. And I thought, I've got to do one of those as well.

[00:31:34] So I started playing around that because Hobby Boss released a Delta Force fast attack vehicle kit in 135th scale. Now, I'm going to go out on a limb here and say, I have never seen a Delta Force fast attack vehicle in the configuration Hobby Boss released. Except if you watch the Chuck Norris movie called Delta Force. And they do look very similar. But if you put that to one side, the Hobby Boss kit is actually a fairly reasonable fast attack vehicle.

[00:32:04] Certainly good enough that you can adapt it. And during the, again, the mid-1980s, the U.S. Army experimented with what they called light infantry divisions. And some of the vehicles that were used for those were these Chernauf sand rails, as they're called officially, which were adapted for military use.

[00:32:27] Two-wheel, two-wheel, rear-wheel drive, VW engines, typical space frame dune buggy with either machine guns or missile launchers on top. If you fire a missile on that thing, it's going to go backwards at a great rate of knots, isn't it? Well, funnily enough, generally, when you see missiles fired from either the Jeeps, never seen them fired from the fast attack vehicles. They are fired to one side, so 30, 40 degrees off for an after side.

[00:32:55] Or they're not at 90 degrees or zero degrees straight forward, which sort of makes sense. But yeah, I've got to get those finished. Even if I end up going back to 48, I've got to get those finished, because otherwise they're just going to sit there staring at me bail for the next six or nine months. At least. Okay. So what have you been spending your cash on recently? Kit-wise, not a huge amount. I'm just trying to think what the last kit I bought was. It's probably a secondhand kit.

[00:33:25] Tack-on do a range, as I'm sure you're aware, of nasal turrets in various scales. And one of the turrets they do is what they call a B turret from Bismarck in 35th scale. And I picked one of those up cheap from a fellow club member. And I looked at it just on a whim. And I looked at it and thought, oh, that looks interesting.

[00:33:50] And then I started, as you do, started researching the turrets and realized that they're also used as B turrets on Nysnau. And I thought, oh, that's a thought. And then I took that one stage further and thought, that's interesting. Because I read that some of the turrets from Nysnau had been removed from the Therahulk and had been emplaced on Coastal Defense fortifications.

[00:34:15] And it turns out one of the B turrets was installed on a Coastal Defense installation in Denmark. And it last fired its guns in 2000. Now, I have to be careful because the tack-on kit includes the rangefinder ears on either side of the turret. But it's the other version of the B turret that doesn't have those that I need to build. But looking at it, it shouldn't be too difficult to reprofile the roof and get rid of those.

[00:34:43] And of course, the Danish one is green. It's not navel gray. And it's got almost like a mossy texture to the outside. It's deliberate sort of camouflage. So sort of random projects I get involved in, some of which get finished and some of which don't. So how did you discover about the Danish connection? I started looking for information on the turrets. And that led me to the Schoenhorst and Isnau using the same style of turret.

[00:35:12] And when I started looking at that, I came across references to the fact that the main turrets, I think, were installed on some Coastal Defenses, the A turrets in Norway. But some of the smaller turrets and some of the individual single guns were installed on Coastal Defenses elsewhere. Hence, there are a couple of photos of the one in Denmark. And it was part of the entrance to the Baltic, effectively.

[00:35:40] So Cold War aimed to fire at anybody who was trying to come through it should the war turn hot. That, as I say, Danes finally decommissioned it in 2000. The whole defence complex is now a museum you can visit and the turret's still there. Wow. Okay. That's news to me. Most definitely could add that to the list next time I go back to Denmark. The fort's called Stevans Fort, which is, I think, S-T-E-V-N-S-F-O-R-T. Okay. I should make a note of that.

[00:36:08] So, other than that, at the moment, I'm spending more money on books than I am on models. But that's not unusual for me. Okie dokie. Right. We'll come back and have a chat about Reference Scale Model World in a few minutes. But, Mr. Brian. Now, I'm going to say something that's not going to make any sense to anyone listening to the show, other than the people on the call, in that welcome back. Yes, it's a thank you. I was Dan Brazil's mule, wasn't I? You were.

[00:36:34] Now, for disclosure, we tried, when we first started out, to get a few interviews in the bank. And we thought, right, we'll do an interview with John. And it was immediately after we'd done an interview with the other John that you've mentioned previously from Guideline. That's right, Mr. Taberno. Mr. Taberno, indeed. And it was a case of, okay, we'll hold John's interview off for a couple of episodes. And then it got slipped and slipped. Yeah, for some very, very small minor people in the modelling world, if I recall correctly. Yeah.

[00:37:04] Nick Jimenez, I think, was one of them. Yes. Yeah, I think, yeah. I mean, what was he doing? Taking you all off spotlight, obviously. Yes. And then, during the interview, you actually made quite a big thing about, you build your models clean with no armament whatsoever. What did you then go and do? Uh, yeah. You actually produced a model that was fully tooled up. Yes, I did. I built, that was, there was an F-35C, a Tamiya one in 148 scale,

[00:37:32] which was full of practice or test GBU-12s, I think they were, bombs and so forth. But I've gone a step further this time, Brownie. So I'm working on an Airfix 148th Jaguar, which not only has bombs, but an open canopy as well, which is something I have not done for a very, very, very long time. Have you seen that new internal canopy print? Yeah. So I spent quite a lot of time very delicately folding Aeres PE parts, attached them, painted them. They're on the inside of the canopy.

[00:38:00] If I do say so myself, I think I did quite a good job on it. And then I saw that frame. So the kit is actually being made for somebody else. It's not for me. I collaborate with someone and we come out with this stuff, which fits my requirements about what I want to build and stuff that he wants to have in his collection. So it's going to be for him. And he is an aftermarket junkie. So all the aftermarket comes. And he messaged me this week and said, John, have you seen this? It's the Mastercraft collection.

[00:38:28] I can't remember what it's called, but a 3D printed internal frame for the canopy. And I was like, yes, I have seen it. Do you want me to strip out what I've done and put that in? And he was like, if you're willing to, that'd be great. And I thought, yes, I am willing to. So that's on back order at the moment. We'll have to wait and see. But that new part looks amazing. So, yeah. Doesn't it just. And for those that haven't seen it online yet, not only is it the internal frame, but it also includes the demisting bar and everything that's inside of the cockpit. Yeah.

[00:38:56] So I've actually, on my one, Aires give you some resin for part of that system, which I have installed. I would say that disadvantage with the 3D printed one is it means the lip of the front of the canopy is going to be too thick. But, you know, you can't have everything. And I think that's the price you pay for having a more complete interior detail. So, yeah, this kit is kicking my ass, to be honest. I'm in pain at the moment. It's gray green wraparound number 54 squadron from 1979 at an exercise in Germany.

[00:39:25] And I don't know if you're aware, Brownie, I know you might have seen it. I had some issues with the wing the first time around. So I attached the wing. I spent ages blending it in with super glue, rescribing, priming, all that kind of stuff. And I thought, before I progressed any further, I ought to see what the landing gear is like because it's a bit floppy. I'm using some aftermarket landing gear. Propped it up on its landing gear and immediately noticed that my wing, I think it's the right wing, was just not square at all with anything else. So that was somewhat annoying.

[00:39:52] I managed to get another wing from Airfix. Spent a long time hacking the wing I had already attached out of the fuselage, going through all the super glue and liquid tamirush to thin I'd used. Unfortunately, Airfix sent me a wing that was also warped, badly warped. So the first one I tried to fix, and given we're in a heat wave now and this one isn't melting yet, but I did melt the first one with a hairdryer and discovered that the trailing edge plastic is very thin and doesn't respond well to a hairdryer. So heat didn't fix it.

[00:40:22] So I installed the second one, and this time I've just fixed it with cutting grooves on the inner surfaces and a lot of brute force and bending it so that it's now plastically deformed. And I do have level wings on either side, but it has sucked a little bit of the enjoyment out of what should be an excellent kit. So I would say if you've got one of these kits, go and have a look at it. Fix the problem before you install it, unlike me. It is an easy fix. I'll put it on my website in due course. I've had quite a lot of correspondence from people who do have similar problems,

[00:40:51] and some people have had no problems whatsoever, and certainly photographic evidence. So it is a variable quality control issue, I think. Yeah, I was going to say, John, I've got one that's three quarters built, and the wings are completely square, so I don't know if it's just a batch that have been... Yeah, yeah. I don't know. Some people, like Chris Meddingsman, he was offering to send me a spare wing as well, but his is warped. Jeffrey Kubiak, who runs Hypersonic Models out of Japan, his is warped. So there are a few around the world. But again, I've had people show me photographs that are taken really well front on.

[00:41:21] You can see everything is square, and the wings are absolutely perfect. And it's not simply an issue of an installation problem. It is warped on the sprue, and obviously it goes all the way across the top of the fuselage as one piece. And so it was completely square and flat across the fuselage. It wasn't installed wonky across the fuselage. And so bending it has solved it. But it is a very thin part, and it's a large part. And I think it would be liable to warping issues if there are some problems with some quality control. Yeah, I think they've been took out the moulds too early, once they've been processed,

[00:41:50] because it's the same with the 24-scale 109 G6 that they did. The wings were all warped. I mean, the fuselages, it looks like they're coming out the mould, and they're not having time to cool down. It's a shame, because presumably they've got a lot of demand, and they're trying to meet it. And maybe that's what happens if you cut a very small corner. Let's just hope they don't do it with the Phantom that's due out next month. Yeah, or the T2. The Jaguar T2 is due out soon, and I would be up for one of those. It's the same time, John.

[00:42:18] Yeah, but I don't really want to have to go through this again. It'd be interesting to see how that comes out of the box. I went and checked mine, because I did message you at the time and said, I've got one here. Yeah. And I went and checked it, and mine is absolutely spot on. Yeah. Yeah. But yes, it is annoying when that happens. So if you've got one in the stash, I suggest you go and have a look at it, and potentially go and get some release backs from, or get a run swap out from Airfix. Yeah, I mean, as I say, my swap out didn't help, but it is an easy fix.

[00:42:46] If you just know where to make some cuts and do some bending, it's not difficult. Okay. So as you're building a GR1 for somebody else, does that mean you're allowed to have a GR1 in your collection building a second one? No. No. So this is a way of me building a GR1 that I don't have to keep. And I do have a GR1A, which was the original Airfix moulding that I built back in 1994. It was aircraft number two in my collection. So it's nice to see it done better the second time around. Right. So obviously when they re-release it as a GR3 in the future.

[00:43:16] Possible. You can actually go for it. Yeah, yeah, possible. But although I believe, Boulders, the parts are in there for the GR3? Probably so, yeah. The additional antennas are supposed to be in the sprue. So I just don't know why. Yeah, they are. I think. Yeah. I just don't know why they've just not done it as a GR1 slash GR3. You know, on D2 boxings with, like they used to. I'm sure they will in two course. Yeah. Fair enough. Okay. And what have you been spending your cash on other than aftermarket for a Jaguar?

[00:43:46] Well, no, I haven't been spending my cash on that. Someone else has been spending their cash on that. That's even better still. Yeah. My teenage daughters have been spending my cash on buying the ICM's 148s ago AH6J Littlebird for Father's Day, Sunday just gone. So they gave me that. And the other thing that I've been spending some time with or company is Hal Bird Models of Ukraine, who make exquisite Ukrainian kits and conversion sets. So a few years ago, I managed to get, well, they're not hard to get,

[00:44:14] an Eduard F51D Korea. It's like a duo boxing. So it came with two kits in it, two Mustangs from the Korean War, an RF51, which is what I bought it for, because I don't want an F51D. So that gave me a spare kit left over, which I obviously haven't built. But Hal Bird Models make a resin conversion for a TF51D in Air National Guard markings from the US. Lovely resin fuselage and so forth. So I bought that. That's what that second kit in the box will go to. But then as I've been spending some time with them and their products and communicating with them recently,

[00:44:43] I realized they do a conversion set for a Cavalier Mustang Mark II in El Salvadoran markings. And Bolivian as well. And I was like, I love that, those markings. It's in a camouflage scheme. It's got tanks on the wingtips. Simple little conversion, but it needs another Eduard P51. So I thought, I know what I'll do. I'll buy the same duo boxing again. So I can have an RF51D, an RF51K, a TF51D, and then I can have this Cavalier Mustang as well. So at some point,

[00:45:13] probably in about 30 years time, I'll be building a lot of Mustangs. Latin American and South American markings are so cool, aren't they? They're really cool. Yeah. Very cool. Yeah. Really cool. It was their first product, they told me. Oh, really? Blimey. Their first conversion set was for that. You know, it's not cheap, but they're a wonderful company doing really, really well in very, very difficult circumstances. Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. And I really love their products. So I'm more than happy to support them. And they sent me some extra bits and pieces in the box to make up for the expensive shipping.

[00:45:43] So yeah, it was great. Fantastic. Nice customer service. If you can drop us a DM after they're recording, John, with their details, I'll reach out to them for our Ukrainian initiative that we've started. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I feel sorry for them because a lot of their recent products have been duplicated by the companies. I built their AM1 Mauler in the winter or early spring, and that's been announced by models of it since. And then they've just announced the North American F-86H Sabre Hog. And then of course, DBMK are doing it as well. But I'm going to get the Halber models one this summer,

[00:46:13] drop everything, and I'll build it straight away. Fantastic. Now, the Mauler was on the front cover of a recent scale aircraft modelling? Yeah. Although allegedly, according to that magazine, I didn't build it. Oh, right. Oops. Is that the same one with the second April issue they brought out? Yeah, I think it's fair to say it was an airst laden issue. But anyway, I got paid. That's all I care about is I got paid. Fair enough. Well, with that, we'll take a short break and we'll come back and we shall have a special episode of the IPMS

[00:46:41] Dispatches and start talking a scale model world 2026. Head to beyondtheboxout.com for host bios, guest features, and direct links to all our social channels. Your central hub for staying connected.

[00:47:11] Welcome to IPMS Dispatches, bringing you society news, upcoming events, and a friendly spotlight on branches and special interest groups across the IPMS community. Right. IPMS Dispatches this episode with JT, John Tapsall, the new manager for scale model world. Welcome, John. Thank you. Obviously,

[00:47:39] we have heard about the first part of your hobby, which is building AFVs. The second part of your hobby, I think, is organizing a small modeling show. Yeah, running the show is very new to me. However, I've been part of the organizing team since we moved to Telford in 1998. So the background work to the show is stuff I've been involved in for nearly on 30 years now. So from that point of view, the show is very familiar to me.

[00:48:08] And picking up or stepping into Rich's shoes as show manager hasn't been as big a shock as it could have been. Rich, to put some context in it, our long-serving president, Paul Regan had indicated he wanted to stand down at the end of his current tenure, which was May of this year. Rich stood for election for that role and was elected. So therefore,

[00:48:37] he'd already been looking for a replacement as show manager. We were having a chat about it late last year. And foolishly, I said, oh, I might be interested in doing that. So I put my nomination in and I was duly elected. So it wasn't sprung on me out of the blue. Just as well, really? Yeah, just as well.

[00:48:59] And I'm currently in the process of picking up all the background work that goes on through the year. You'll be pleased to know we're having a show this year, which is always a good start. That's a bonus. We are steadily accruing bookings from traders. We are steadily, well, I say steadily, all of our branches and special interest groups should have filled their branch return in by the end of April.

[00:49:27] So if anybody's listening who is a member of a branch or a SIG who hasn't done that, do it pronto. Because if you don't, you won't get space at Telford. So we have those. Last majority have been there. What's the cutoff date for those? End of April. Ah, that's going well then, isn't it? We always, always get probably 90% of them back well in time. And there's always a small number who, for one reason or another,

[00:49:55] don't get their returns back in time. So we're sort of used to it. And we work on the basis that they get their returns back at some point. Hopefully, there'll still be space for them. From our perspective, it's becoming more and more of an issue, simply because there are more and more branches and special interest groups forming. And there is a finite amount of space we can allocate to display. When we consider the balance between the number of branches and SIGs and the number of traders at the show,

[00:50:24] and the space we use for other activities as part of that wider event. So it is becoming more of an issue in that respect. But, you know, we have plans in place. We're, we've got space for traders still. We've got probably about three quarters of the traders we would normally have who've at least paid the deposits and indicated they're definitely wanting to come to this year's show.

[00:50:51] I won't tease with any specific names yet, simply because everybody's paid deposits. We haven't chased everybody for their full booking fee as yet. But having said that, we are hoping to do something slightly different this year in that normally we do not issue any form of floor plan until September or October, because we try and get more certainty around who's coming and where they're going to be located.

[00:51:18] We're going to try and get an initial floor plan out within the next month, so that people can start having an idea of who's likely to be there, where their own branch and six stands are likely to be, and so on and so forth. And yeah, the usual caveat, correct at the time we're going to press, maybe subject to change prior to the show opening. And we normally change it even as we're setting up one or two traders will be swapped around,

[00:51:45] just because something works very slightly better when we actually look at it in the flesh on the day. So yeah, everything's moving forward quite smoothly. As I say, I'm picking that up. I'm engaging with a number of traders who are asking queries. We're getting some inquiries in from potential new traders as well, which is always a good sign. What else? Trends. Trends for the show long term. What we are seeing,

[00:52:15] which is music to our ears, is a steady increase in the number of less mainstream subject areas, from our point of view as traditional scale modellers. And one of the obvious ones for that is the gun player and mecha, a gun-down environment. For years and years, there was an iron curtain between those two hobbies, never the twain shall meet. And then all of a sudden,

[00:52:43] a group of our own members put their hands up and said, we'd like to form a gun player and mecha sick, special interest group. At which point we said, yeah, fine. Sell your boots. Because two things. One, that pressure has come from within as well as without. So clearly there is an appetite from within IBMS, which is often seen as quite a traditionalist organization. And secondly,

[00:53:08] it demonstrates that there is a much broader aspect to our hobby. It's very easy to talk about the different areas between fittings on a Jaguar GR1 rather than a GR3, for example. That's really important to people like us, or most of the people like us. Gundam is something completely different. It has its own environment. It has its own. Its own culture? Its own culture. Yeah.

[00:53:37] And it's not a new culture either. I think that's what shocks a lot of people, just how long those kits and that hobby has been around. So it's great that we're getting that. We had Gumple UK on as a guest to give, hopefully, our bench mates a bit of an insight into the hobby. But Shane is sat there on the call, grinning like a Cheshire cat. Yes, I can see that. He's head of the Gundam Sig for the UK. Yeah. And that, for me, is exactly what we need as an organization to be. We need to,

[00:54:07] we have our traditions, we have our traditional subject areas. But if we want to survive long term as an organization that supports and promotes and encourages sticking bits of plastic together in one form or another, we have to move with the times. We have to develop. We have to change. Without losing those traditional elements that we have. Also not excluding people, because we've also got ex-el Presidente,

[00:54:34] Paul Regan is coming on again in a few episodes time. And we're talking about his new specialist trust group he's about to start for Warhammer, which is another area of the hobby, which seems to have been excluded or almost blackboard as it were. And it's a case of if we want to survive, we need to be encompassing all forms of scale modeling. It's also added to the show as well though, isn't it? For example, the Gundam build area over the last couple of years. So we did it as a SIG the first year. And then obviously the likes of Jadlam in particular,

[00:55:03] who were so heavily involved last year, dedicated staff. And it was never, ever empty throughout the whole show. And like I say, it's just inclusive. And it's another element. It's plastic modeling. It's a figure. It's a plane. It's a tank. It doesn't matter. You've got my missus into it from Salford. Yeah. I go regularly to the Avonshire in early August and it's run in conjunction with one of the local war gaming groups. And the two, the halls there, one of the halls is not completely,

[00:55:33] but largely dedicated to war games and participation games. Getting the different factions of the broader hobby to actually engage with each other and see what each other are doing. And understand that, you know what? We're not really all that different from each other after all. Yeah. The emphasis is often different. The Warhammer and the war gaming, their painting styles are absolutely stunning. I wish I could paint like that,

[00:56:02] but they're not necessarily the traditional realistic styles that scale model figure painters would necessarily deal with. But you can learn from them and you can adapt and you can change. Same with the model railway environment. Again, go to the Key Model World show at the NEC, for example, to see a show where so many of the different hobbies are existing side by side.

[00:56:28] I think you're looking at an area where we are developing significantly. If you look at some of the, there are other modeling societies, national organizations that are contemporary with IPMS. We all started at roughly the same sort of time. Some of them slightly early. It's really interesting to see that some of those have adapted and changed and remain healthy and others haven't and are struggling to survive.

[00:56:58] And I think it's important that we grow and change, but we retain that, that traditional element we've got. I mean, IPMS has give or take 5,000 members these days in the UK. The only other national IPMS organization that can equal where we are roughly is the United States, IPMS USA. And we have never been until recently the same size as IPMS USA. We've always been smaller.

[00:57:26] And that says something about the UK organization. We're doing enough to attract enough people, but we can't get complacent. We have to maintain that. We have to move forward. And scale model world is the same. We're not going to make massive changes. We will change bit by bit as we have done. Most people won't have noticed changes over the last 10 or 15 years, but they are there. And we all continue to do that. And sometimes we will experiment with things and say, oh, that's a good idea. We'll try that.

[00:57:54] And we try it for a couple of years and maybe it doesn't work as well as it ought to, or it doesn't bring anything extra to the show. But if we don't do that, we're never going to know. It's very easy to turn around and say, ah, that'll never work. We won't even bother trying. Fair enough. Okay. So moving on a little bit, what is the biggest challenge in organizing Telford? That's an interesting one because we've been involved with it for so long. It's familiar to a lot of us.

[00:58:24] We, we comment to each other in terms of the organizers. Most years at some point during the weekend, there'll be something not unusually that we consider to be a major crisis. And we're running around like headless chickens and we sort it out and it moves on smoothly. Nobody else notices, but it winds us up enormously because it's really, really significant to us. But the, the visitor experience, the exhibitor experience isn't changed. One job, they don't notice.

[00:58:54] And I think sometimes one of the biggest challenges for us is being able to step outside our own little bubble as organizers and say, okay, let's look at the bigger picture. Has everybody enjoyed the show? Has everybody had a good time? Have they spent too much money? Was the, did the competition work? Yeah. There's always comments about, well, that should never have won or why didn't that, why didn't that win every trophy under the sun type of thing? But it's making sure the show runs smoothly.

[00:59:24] We are blessed. And I use that word advisedly with a really, really good relationship with the venue. It helps that we've been there for 28 years now. So many of the people we started dealing with way back in 1998 are still there on the management team. So there is a continuity there. So even within IPMS there have been changes through the years as to who's president, who's show manager.

[00:59:51] But there is a cycle of familiarity there that allows us to work within the rules, to deal flexibly with issues that arise, to know that if we do have an issue with something, we can talk to people there and both sides will find a solution. The other issue that we will always have is that every year things get more expensive.

[01:00:16] So we are constantly balancing the type of show we run against the budget we have available. And we can still do that and we can balance the books. And as long as we can continue to do that, we're comfortable. We're looking at some subtle changes in the background over the coming year or two. Again, which most people won't notice, but hopefully they will have a material impact on the way the show is run and how we push things forward.

[01:00:44] So overall, the more it changes, the more it stays the same. I'm not convinced the show will get any larger in terms of its physical footprint, because space costs money. But we're always looking at ways we can make better use of the space we have access to. That makes sense. So going back a little bit, have you said you've been involved in the event for a considerable number of years? What are some of your personal highlights and favourite memories from previous Telfords?

[01:01:14] That'd be a difficult one to pick out, certainly from the early years. But I'll give you something I think that all of us as organisers took away big time. And that was, obviously in 2020, we couldn't run a show. That became obvious at a very early stage. And we debated at huge length in 2021, whether it was appropriate to run a show in 2021. And in the end,

[01:01:42] we decided to bite the bullet and do it. And we knew we would make a loss on that show. We were convinced. And we did. But the level of thanks and appreciation we got from pretty much everybody who came through the doors that year about the fact that we were actually running the show and we were back. I think that for me was a real highlight, both as a hobbyist, but also personally and emotionally.

[01:02:12] Yeah, we'd made a judgment call and it had gone down well, because potentially it might not have done it. Could have gone pear-shaped. And we've been able to build back up over the last three or four years to somewhere approaching where we were pre-COVID. And I think that shows the underlying strength, both as a hobby and off-scale model world as a show. We've got the support we've got, both from the visitors and the traders, but the hobby as a whole continues to grow and develop.

[01:02:42] And that, yeah, if we can be a major shop window for that hobby, then that's all too good. Okay. So for those that don't know, what are the dates for this year's event? 7th and 8th of November. Also, this episode drops on the 2nd of July. When do the tickets go on sale? We will be releasing tickets from the 1st of July. So yesterday. Or you can just be an IPMS member and turn up. You can. That is also an advantage.

[01:03:12] But then again, we are aware that everybody wishes to be an IPMS member, which might seem a strange thing to say from a committed IPMS long-term member. It's really easy to see IPMS as somebody or an organization that sees itself as somehow the pinnacle of the hobby. We are not. We never will be. That might have been the intent way, way back in 1963 when we were formed.

[01:03:39] The vast majority of people who build models do not belong to an organized club or an organization like IPMS. They buy their models, they build them, they enjoy them, they put them on the shelf or wherever they choose to display them. I think, I enjoyed that. I'll go and buy another one. Organizations like IPMS and other modeling societies are built on people who want to take their hobby that little bit more seriously, that little bit more research,

[01:04:08] perhaps just want to be part of a community of like-minded people. And IPMS UK is in a really healthy position. We're a tiny minority of the model behind public in the UK. So for me, having spent 12 years as the IPMS publicity officer, one of the things I bang on about year after year is we need a healthy hobby because if we don't have a healthy hobby, we don't have a healthy IPMS. So the two feed off each other. The hobby has to be healthy and supported.

[01:04:38] That's the most important thing to me. From memory last year, it was cheaper to buy membership for IPMS, which got you two days free entry into the show than actually buying individual show tickets. That would still be the case. It's not a policy as such. We know that one day is busier than the other. That's always been the case. And it's the same with pretty much any two day show you go to. So IPMS members, as you pointed out earlier,

[01:05:08] get in for free for both days. And if you wanted to come as a paying customer for both days, it would be more expensive to pay for two tickets. But from our point of view, the membership also includes six magazines a year. And we've always prided ourselves in a high production quality for those magazines. Apart from scale model world,

[01:05:37] it is the second biggest outlay of money we have for the society. And a huge chunk of that these days is postal distribution. So we are looking at ways of adapting to that environment. Again, we've got ideas, but they'll see the light of day in the fullness of time. For anybody who's been to the IPMS USA convention in the United States, it is a huge show. It runs for three and a half days,

[01:06:06] but it's a very different show from ours and a very different emphasis. And what we pride ourselves on in terms of scale model world is very much the social element of the show. It gives us, for many people coming through the door, is what is important to them. Meeting up with old friends, making new friends. Yes, spending money. That's great. Chatting to the traders, chatting to people on other clubs. For us,

[01:06:34] that's arguably the most important element of the entire show. Yes, the competition is hugely important to us. Yes, the number of traders there is hugely important to us. Allowing the branches and the SIGs to display their models on a myriad of different subject areas. That's important to us. But it's the vibe at the show that is the most important. Okay. With that, John, obviously, if anyone online wants to have a look for information on the show,

[01:07:01] it's ipmsuk.org, and follow the links for scale model world, I believe. That's correct. And as we go through the year, we will be adding lists of traders, lists of branches and SIGs that are displaying, and eventually we will be publishing initial floor plans on there as well, and any special events that are coming along as we get closer to the big two days. Okay, John, thank you very much for your time. Okay.

[01:07:29] We will hopefully get you back on again at least once prior to the event for an update. Yep. We will now have a chat with Mr. Middleton. Are you looking for top quality paints for your next project? Then look no further than the scale modeler supply. Hi, I'm Scott,

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[01:08:28] Head over to our website, scalemodel.com.au, to check out our full range and to find your closest retailer. So we're now joined by Rich Middleton, the new president, IPMS UK. Welcome back to the show, Rich. Thank you very much. Glad to be back. Fantastic. And obviously, after you've had your feet under the table for a few weeks since the meeting at Coventry, how have things rationally changed in that timeframe?

[01:08:57] I'm not working on Scam by the world so much. Oh, fantastic. That's J2's problem now. Yeah, somebody else might be doing that. So yeah, it's more getting the internal channels to work properly and get some of the strategic work that we'd started prior to Paul handing over. But I'll get some of that embedded, worked on and roll that forwards in a respectable amount of time. They don't change overnight, but working on some various bits and pieces.

[01:09:28] Okay. You've shown me the draft poster, which is due to appear any day when the pod drops, which looks absolutely fantastic. And you've got the logo from last year, tweaked slightly, but obviously you're now going to keep that going for a little while. I should imagine as the brand full scale model world, I guess. Yes, that's the plan. The previous one did a fantastic job, but we felt it was time for a refresh, which is what we achieved last year. So we'll follow us a pretty similar way, whether anybody noticed,

[01:09:57] but the logo for the show changed every year. And it wasn't just a name, you know, number change, obviously for the date, but the location of the date and the number and everything else, it's all sort of quietly moved around the logo. This one is a little bit more static in that regards, but the colors are very vividly different. So that's how it's going to work for a period of time. Go and go, we'll see how long it lasts. And probably run over the palette, I guess. Fair enough.

[01:10:49] Okay. okay and obviously the day that this episode drops which is the 2nd of july can you tell everyone when the tickets go on sale for telford for this year the tickets went on sale yesterday 1st of july is the target date i don't know what day of the week that is is it a monday or tuesday i don't remember it's wednesday oh down to be wrong well no yeah so the tickets officially

[01:11:14] opened are on the 1st of july we would have we will when time we get there have an announcement on our primary short notice board on the facebook pages made that well known the qr code to book those tickets will be available on the 1st of july no earlier it will also appear on the posters and the distribution leaflets that you may well be receiving in your emergency parcels let's call that that you receive from your trader of choice we're distributing a lot more this year

[01:11:44] through various different traders through people such as yourselves when you have your display tables as well as having a quantity available to distribute through the sigs and branches so it's really a lot harder this year the view of just trying to get more people through the door okay well fingers crossed you're having for the avon show in august and we'll pick some up there from you i'll definitely be available then okay we've talked about that ticket pricing

[01:12:10] what are the prices this year the crisis have been held flat to last year so they are 25 pound for a day ticket for adults children remain free under the age of 16 it's two children per paying adult so that's pretty much exactly as it was last year now one of the things that a lot of the overseas

[01:12:34] nationals have are social events tied in with the nationals have you ever thought about doing something other than the formal dining night from a lot more of an informal gathering it has been mentioned now the show finishes at six o'clock on the saturday evening with time when everybody's there a lot of members will have just emerged leery eyed and sleepless in their eyes from the

[01:13:00] secret brown sleepers meeting that should finish our five-ish i would hope it's not a little it depends on what we have on the agenda and the question is really what do members want to do because some people have already got their plans well in place well established over the years as well they're going to go to restaurant a or pub b and do whatever it is they do that don't necessarily want

[01:13:25] to form or sit down dinner or banquet or whatever it is that the format is also that's how much a lot of people are glad to get out of the building to be honest so where do we hold such an event because we could do it within the confines of telford but as you can probably imagine that doesn't come for free the prices would probably have an input from the venue as well so what is the best option to do do

[01:13:52] we hire another venue again at what costs so it's a format of how it would work best for a majority of people it's no good putting it on for let's just say forsake about we had all the overseas guys came to us and nobody else has achieved anything more than they're doing during the day during the show itself yeah so we've got to strike a reasonable approach to what would work for a group of folks

[01:14:19] who are tired and tachy to get together and then throw in a little bit of alcohol more than likely and you can see it could be interesting yes i could see punch-ups between the aircraft and the armor guys immediately yep i haven't mentioned good damn i was gonna say you wait till us boys get involved we've talked about pricing we've talked about the event so have we got any new traders or any exciting new announcements new branches or anything that you want to talk about the thing at this time of the

[01:14:44] year it's an evolving picture so we've got a lot of people committed to attend the shows optimists say most of us need to be committing don't we but and we also have a lot that we're still working on that haven't completed the process from last year we need to follow up on how many of those are interested in coming back how many are not one or two have said they're not coming back we do have a number of new six and maybe a couple of branches as well but whether they

[01:15:11] sometimes they're not always formed to have display spaces let's go on some of them do and i can't remember off the top of my head what the balance is this year but there are some new ones we have had some issues with some six particularly some branches as always very slow to send their returns back and i know pat as uklo is incredibly frustrated that people can't follow simple instructions and return them

[01:15:39] information and he's being much more hard-blind this year if you haven't sent it back don't expect to get display space well that's pretty reasonable jt was a little bit more lenient last night but he did say the end of april was with a cutoff and we're in now july we think yes the hour july is so yeah it's yeah we'll wait and see how that evolves i would prefer to get as many sigs and branches in as we can but if they can't be asked to follow an instruction if they've been a sig leader for any period of time

[01:16:07] they know what the process is then that's the price to pay unfortunately it's fair enough as well isn't it i think but rich is there is it looking like there's going to be another gundam workshop this year i've always been keen to put the gundam workshop on and i'm very keen to ensure that it happens this year so take that as a yes i'll be working with the benefactor that supported us on that i.e japan

[01:16:31] going forward yeah either i or john will let's put it that way yeah but we also have gundam workshop as a trader this year that's excellent news so again another one to the bow i think it's just it's growing so much over the last few years it's really good to see and it's obviously it's attracting attention from some of the more dyed in the wool shall we call them that builders yeah

[01:16:56] you want a new art person very impressed with what you get in the box yeah and how and they everything so it is a growing area it's not just for the younger generations i think anybody can get any excitement and enjoyment out of them so i think it's definitely something that you know we can pursue with vigor shall we say makes such a difference for those that might be a bit sensory or a bit

[01:17:23] absolutely you know sort of like maybe prone to strong smells like the glues and the paints and stuff that get used yeah and again like the workshop going from a couple years ago where we did it as the sig to now having the support of a trader dedicated trader is absolutely fantastic and long that may continue and thanks to ipms for supporting that and putting that forward no i'm very keen to see that develop and strengthen with all the machinations going on in margate hornby hobbies and then guys

[01:17:51] have air fix have confirmed that they're coming so rest easy i'm just going through my list of traders as i handed over to john with the ones that i know that are new traders we do have quite a few so people like floating world designs evading people have just done the new aircraft stands i think they may be oh yes yes yes yes was that one with the f14 that's a joint angle or something like that

[01:18:16] yeah it's yeah like the acrylics the acrylic stands that sort of slot into each other yeah brilliant they may be maybe the one we've got company from china who i'm working on personally their official title is shenzhen stellite technology co-limited steady i think is it steady s-t-e-d-i if i remember rightly yeah that's the very one so they are trading got to do some

[01:18:42] background admin for them so they can get some visas as you can imagine yeah so they should be an interesting addition again they're on the back of what we've done with gundam so you know see how it all starts to evolve in terms of just trying to get something in very much so but also there's the progression in the market of tools and paints and as you're talking about earlier for the low odor stuff for the gundam which is now crossing over into the mainstream i'll say mainstream hobby

[01:19:11] into the hobby yeah and the pens as well the paint pens and the panel liners all of that stuff but ak of big loads up haven't they in terms of all that's a good idea definitely okay is there anything else that you need to or you'd like to actually raise reference to alfifilicia at this stage because one thing we've already discussed with andy brown i don't know he's actually discussed it with you is we would like to try and do something slightly different with regard to the

[01:19:37] judging and at the point of virtually the judging being completed is andy and i are going to go around with the microphone and have a talk about some of how the judging's actually done without obviously being too specific but also to get the winner just after they've come off from getting the handshake with yourself and getting a reaction from some of the winners at the time yes it sounds like a cracking idea it had been muted before i think from yourself if i remember rightly to try and get something there

[01:20:05] as long as of course is the the winner's not got a plane to catch yeah that's true that's true then again you had to go to london last year for the best of the show yes that sounds like a good idea another thing that i'm trying to encourage dull that the ec to explore is how we can approach sponsors now you mentioned the national champion they were actually sponsored last year which cork wore out a little bit if we're honest because he didn't know

[01:20:34] they presented the national champion prize so we've got to manage that a little bit better this year okay but yeah but that's just an element of sponsorship there are many facets of the show that we think we can encourage our sponsors to to support us with and anything we can do will be an added bonus in vincent models for sale supported the junior champion last year

[01:21:02] i haven't had that conversation yet within this year but i'm sure he'll be amenable well as we lead up to the show obviously yourself jt and the rest of the team are more than welcome to jump back on with any updates etc but i think something that might be worthwhile is if you've got any of the trophies that still need sponsorship have a think about coming on and actually talking about what you need but also talking about the sponsors you have for some of the other trophies

[01:21:27] yeah we're not we're looking outside of just purely competition trophies we've got scope that we've already at pencil in to look at how we can approach some better trophy sponsorship i'm looking for i don't know let's have a think how about sponsoring off all you know those kinds of impacts yes what's it for them is our biggest challenge at the moment but yeah we're working on it okay well

[01:21:52] if you want to actually add in a conversation on the show more than happy to actually help you guys out with that as well because most of the companies are obviously going to be modeling related but if anybody's thinking to this cast is oh that's an idea i'm interested in that just coach yeah no problem now one thing that we did talk about with jt and for disclosure obviously you've picked up in the conversation we recorded this on a separate day to when we had our conversation with jt jt was yesterday

[01:22:20] and rich as a day was the sunday element saturday is normally the busier day but sunday has something which is reasonably unique we did try to capture it last year which i think we achieved in the show with the recording but we're planning to actually have microphones in different places for this year including one up on the actual mezzanine to get the better audio for the ceremony side of it but if you want to just talk through the what happens on a sunday morning rich

[01:22:46] well sunday morning i don't want to go through this without getting emotional so yeah today starts as always on the certainly any show just repeat practically of the saturday morning until we get to about five to eleven and there is an open invitation to anybody that has served in any armed force globally so if you're in the overseas section please feel free to go up nobody needs a

[01:23:13] formal invitation to attend service is one of respect and anybody that is on the country is treated equal regardless of the service in the arm that you joined and anticipated in the format is pretty well established in that andy brown is currently the officer in charge of the parade my role or will

[01:23:37] thought of what board previously is very much in the side channels to basically look at the timings and things like that and i believe we have bugler all the night again and it's an honor to be on that platform and it's an experience that is difficult to explain when everything goes quiet yes it's probably

[01:24:04] the largest gathering for commemoration service certainly in the midlands we've been told possibly one of the largest in the country in terms of people on the ground going quiet for two minutes everybody should feel proud of honoring those sorry i get it we actually were going to play it out last

[01:24:27] year the halls going silent the whole service and then the noise afterwards one thing we didn't play out was something that one of the microphones actually picked up which was someone from overseas having a small or quiet word near to where dan was stood with his microphone and we ran it through ai to actually see what there was actually said and they said i can't imagine anyone in our country doing

[01:24:53] something like this this is fantastic as i said we should be proud of what we achieved there yeah without question now in terms of numbers people quote numbers of people that attend that ceremony generally speaking the attendance on sunday is half that on saturday whatever you want to quote the numbers as being in total yeah so that's generally speaking what the split is over the day then

[01:25:20] obviously not everybody's there at 11 o'clock some people need to attend other events before they come into the hall so it's getting the balance right yeah so if we took the total footfall at around number 6 000 people then 2 000 will probably be in that hall give or take yeah that gives you an idea of the attendance at that ceremony yeah i fully get it now i would suggest for any of the benchmates that are

[01:25:49] listening that don't like really crowded environments to think about going on the sunday rather than the saturday it will give them a much better experience of the show without feeling quite so i won't say hemmed in but there is obviously a lot more people in the same area and it just can feel a little bit more cozy shall you say but you're still going to see the same models on the table you're still going to see

[01:26:14] most of the same bargains around the traders the experience is the same and if you want to have a sing and dance with all the members of the exec after they've been suffering from the saturday night to perform with a banging head you're more than welcome i tell you what that saturday evening is an element that i have yet to get my head around because additionally i doesn't have to make a speech

[01:26:37] oh so look forward to believe me it won't be extensive fantastic okay rich if there's anything else we can help with them in the lead up more than welcome and as i said to jt yesterday we will have another show in the lead up probably a month or so prior to the actual event taking place for updates with what traders we've got etc etc but in the meantime if there's anything updates you want to

[01:27:04] just show across to us or you just want to jump on for a part of the show for the ipms dispatches more than welcome and anything we can do to help we will that's great thanks brownie appreciate it i guys that you've joined in um have you got any questions that you want to put when does competitions open up rich competition entries i'm not really sure it tends to be about august from memory yeah i think the andy's going to same schedule on that i don't think you've seen ready full changes to

[01:27:32] normal competition area one thing i didn't mention is abora are repeating a diorama competition results oh that's good so i've been involved in their process in terms of establishing entrance yeah so i know they're going to be something special this year and so that could be worth something worth looking at i think last year i didn't actually get in the competition area last year

[01:27:58] but i believe we're going to be looking at doing something similar and having some space in the competition area for the agora competition is something they run for themselves yeah that makes sense yeah what's the deadline for people wanting to take part in the competition rich i think it goes up to a day or two before the event yeah that sounds good i think it might be a week before it just gives them the final chance to get the processing done yeah this has been everything else associated

[01:28:28] with tel but it's a volunteer thing and the system they've got in place now is very good but very efficient they just need to make sure they've got everything in place that they need to so we used i think they allowed the juniors probably to arrive on the morning of simply for the fact that they're probably finishing off on saturday morning but yeah and again i think it's a little bit of leeway to accommodate late entries but i don't think it's huge

[01:28:53] and obviously with talking about how much quieter the sunday can be is there any scope does the sunday finish at 4 p.m normally is there any scope to extend that to the six to but because people might think okay it's a shorter day traders are going to be winding down might it encourage people to come down for the sunday the problem you've got every the problem you've got there is on the friday everybody

[01:29:19] arrives there's only a few that arrive on saturday morning set up and they've got a really tight window of opportunity yeah yeah on the sunday doesn't matter whether you're telford branch or whether you're for sake of argument wonderland has got to get to eduburgh everybody wants to get out and hanging it on longer and longer and longer doesn't work for everybody we got out the halls

[01:29:44] quarter past seven last year so that's three and a half quarter hours after the end of the event yeah six it makes it quarter past nine yeah it's a long old process bearing in mind that the advance party arrives on thursday evening and it's a sure fact i have no intention of going to work on the morning morning it makes it a very long weekend yeah as it is without stretching the sunday i understand the reasoning the question don't get me wrong you may feel you're not getting the same vote for

[01:30:12] money perhaps because the other thing i was going to ask rich is the and i don't just think this about telford i think this about bolton as well is the any possibility of looking at say a discounted ticket for let's say if you're entering if we're keeping it till four let's say you're entering from 1pm onwards it would there be any scope of looking at say okay to incentivize people coming through

[01:30:37] the door for those last few hours you can get a ticket say half price but like a twilight ticket like they do on the old golf tees eh you know what happened last time you talked about golf it cost you was it around 75 drinks was it i'm not i yeah i'm not gonna confirm nor deny but it was a very very very very sore head the next day but rich just to go back to the competitions yeah is there like a

[01:31:02] consideration for a competition entry fee that is there a fee at the moment or not that there isn't a fee at the moment but it is very much on the agenda okay and the question is what should that fee be now some of the provincial shows do charge a nominal fee to enter a competition which is indicative of what we may be considering but there's a counter argument to suggest well if it's

[01:31:28] the show to win a prize at maybe the entry fee should reflect that so what fee do we set if we set a fee of what level does it start putting people off entering yeah there are obviously a cohort within the modeling world that are very competition focused so they would probably not consider a fee

[01:31:53] obstructive but the average modeler may do so we've got to get that balance right i don't want to undervalue and getting an entry into tell for this competition but i don't want to overprice it either so we've got to find the right level yeah a lot of the conversation has been around so far is okay fine but how much i don't think we've yet reached a conclusion that we're we're satisfied will work

[01:32:19] and obviously andy will have a massive input into that yeah okay rich thank you very much for your time thank you for giving me the air time not a problem the slightest and as a surprise to the two guys on the call because they don't know this yet but hopefully we'll be speaking to you again in a couple of weekends time where we'll be joined by the president of ipms usa i president ipms uk and

[01:32:45] we're hoping we're going to have the president of ipms canada for a round table for the first time ever that should be an interesting conversation because that's a joint episode with the scale model podcast over in canada okay because their show's been on the hiatus since middle last year because the host has had some issues with his better half medical issues quite serious ones so he's obviously taken a back seat giving her the priority so instead of their show dying we've hosted a couple of shows

[01:33:13] will have been a couple of shows by then on their behalf so they join us we put it out as a joint show and it just keeps their audience entertained as well excellent fish cop models elevating scale modeling to an art form experience highly detailed 3d printed upgrade parts that bring true authenticity to your

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[01:34:23] wallets trembling shelf space gone excellent here comes the latest wave of irresistible plastic temptation in the stash inflation report well bench mates it's time once again just to see how much damage our wallets are about to take as we open the doors to another edition of the beyond the box art stash inflation report as always i'll be covering everything with wings before handing over to dan for

[01:34:49] the armor nerves will be taking the high seas and shane will round everything off with the latest from the world of gumbler and mecca so let's get stuck in i see i'm a leading us off this week with a couple of cracking one to 48 releases first up is the sikorsky uh-60a blackhawk fitted with the esss pylons and winter skis it's a proper cold weather machine that should have a helicopter fans and diorama builders

[01:35:15] researching for the wallets sticking with 48th icm have also announced a new boxing of the handy page hamden operation gardening celebrating those often overlooked rf mine laying missions it's another great excuse to build one of rs more distinctive twin engine bombers rs models continue to champion the

[01:35:36] unusual with not one but two new boxings of the kiyushu k11w eragiku japanese navy trainer each comes with three deckle options and if like me you enjoy building aircraft that don't appear on every competition table these are definitely worth a look talking of unusual sword have announced both halves of mighty grumman guardian in one to seventy second scale you've got the af-2w hunter and the af-2s killer

[01:36:04] each supply with two korean war era u.s navy schemes and masks included buy both and you get a complete cold war anti-submarine package if your wallet was feeling safe ibg have decided otherwise they have been seriously busy this month there's a lovely 48th pzl m18b domada firefighting aircraft alongside three interesting 70 second scale releases a spitfire mark 5b tropical from north africa the reconnaissance

[01:36:34] spitfire pr type g and the polish air force suko su-20 complete with models of it plastic photo etch and comprehensive stencil sheet lf models have announced a pair of north american trainers in 72nd the na a-57p2 arrives in both luftwaffe and french air force halt markings each complete with four

[01:36:59] decal options and masks now if edward announces something people tend to pay attention the latest weekend edition of the bf 109 f4 gives you four marking options but it's the forthcoming one to thirty second p51b mustang that is grabbing all the headlines five puller schemes masks four to etch an astonishing amount of mandatory 3d printed detail including the cockpit wheelbase exhausts wheels and

[01:37:25] gun barrels no plastic alternatives here edward are clear embracing the future mama hobby continued the excellent run with another curtis hawk 81a2 flying tigers boxing in 72nd scale three classic sharp-mouth schemes and honestly who doesn't like a flying tiger the opposite end of the size spectrum brengon have released 144th dg 1000 glider alongside the equally dimmative gornier d all 335 per fail

[01:37:54] small kits but potentially a big dent in the stash amp are going large with a 30 second scale hughes oh 6 caillus profi pack vietnam helicopter fans have been asking for something like this for years so i suspect this one is going to prove rather popular over a special hobby there is another bumper release schedule the new tool 1-48 bucker bestman features new fuselage molds engine options

[01:38:19] four to etch and 3d printed parts there is a seriously well equipped at6 texan little warrior high-tech kit in 72nd scale packed with resin etch and six combat schemes and finally they produced a fascinating ju-87d stuka combat and captured allowing you to build luftwaffe italian ref captured or us air force captured

[01:38:44] aircraft in the same boxing hp clearly out finished with the shiragikra either they've announced three separate 1 to 72nd variants all including 3d printed engines and masks covering the one k11w1 the kushu k11w1 and early and later k11w2 airliner fans haven't been forgotten neither x-scale are producing a

[01:39:07] 1 to 72nd hs121 trident 1c along with a 1 to 144 scale atr 72 600 wings finally for this month something gloriously bizarre my premier are bringing out a 1 to 32nd dfw t28 flow if you've never seen one before imagine someone asked you what if we made a first world war aircraft but just weird well that's

[01:39:37] exactly what they did and now you can build one so plenty dirt attempt aircraft builders at every persuasion from wartime bombers and helicopters to trainers airliners and some wonderfully obscure subjects but enough about the wings down over to you what delays have the armor manufacturers lined up for us this week now while you've been spending everybody's pension funds on aircraft i'm pleased to report that the armor world has been doing its very best to keep pace first up this episode is a

[01:40:05] reference book recommendation panzer x publishing have announced panzer x number 28 british from authors lee archer and dick taylor with color profiles from philippe ronda now if you've ever picked up a panzer x title before you know these are not your typical military history books the focus is very much on original wartime photographs detailed research and fascinating vehicle details that are absolute gold dust for

[01:40:34] modelers this latest volume comes in a familiar landscape format runs to 128 pages and contains no fewer than 156 photographs alongside six color artworks as the title suggests this volume focuses on british vehicles and subjects making it a particularly useful addition for anyone with an interest in

[01:40:59] british armor soft skins and wartime weathering references it's available now from the panzer rex website with an introductory price of just 22 pounds 50 although that discount ends on the 30th of june moving on to plastic rather than paper and meng have announced a timely new release with their 1 35th scale leopard 2a4

[01:41:25] in ukrainian service catalogue number ts-058 this release reflects one of the most significant armored vehicle stories of recent years with leopard 2s now firmly established as part of ukraine's battlefield inventory the kit includes a dedicated ukrainian marking option being a modern meng armor kit expectations are

[01:41:53] understandably high for detail fit and overall quality this one is currently expected in august 2026 and should prove popular with both modern armor builders and those wishing to depict contemporary conflict subjects next up the team at dynamo models have officially launched a brand new dioramas range

[01:42:18] launching initially in 1 35th scale the range already includes six different resin diorama bases designed specifically to showcase vehicles figures and small vignette scenes the castings appear to carry the same level of detail we've come to expect from dynamo's figure range and the company has already confirmed

[01:42:41] that this is just the beginning with additional scenery seat pieces buildings accessories and historical settings already under development and don't worry i have hinted to them to do some 148 stuff too a welcome addition from a company doing great things and finally a little bit of industry intelligence for you chris meddings from ita3 or inside the armor has confirmed to us that upgrade sets are already in

[01:43:10] development for newly released airfix elvis f03 saracen mark 5 any of the new tool post-war military vehicle releases from airfix always seem to generate huge amounts of interest and it won't surprise anyone that the aftermarket manufacturers are already looking at ways to have even more detail no firm release dates just yet but if you're planning to add the new saracen to your stash it may be worth keeping a little room

[01:43:38] in the budget for whatever chris and the team have coming down the line and that's all from the world of armor for this episode now i'm going to hand over to nevs who has once again emerged from the dockyards carrying enough naval releases to sink a reasonably sized destroyer take it away mate thanks dan well benchmates if you thought your stash was already taking on water i've got plenty here that will happily

[01:44:05] sink what's left of your bank balance starting with a brand i've spoken about before on the pod model bow ray are about to let their latest kit out drydock and this is a special one we are about to get the sms ostfriedland in 1 to 700 scale model bow ray have given this long-awaited relief much hype and rightly so ostfriedland was the second member of the heligoland class of german dreadnoughts

[01:44:35] following hot on heels of the nassau with improved 12-inch guns retained in the interesting hexagonal six turret layout the ostfriedland survived the war and was ceded to the united states as a war trophy in 1920 i think it is a great idea that model bow ray have decided not to go for the weed ship in the class enabling them to take a unique ship and run with it looking at the half-built nassau currently

[01:45:02] sat on my workbench i am genuinely excited about this release and while i might not have been quick to add a heligoland to the stash the ostfriedland with all its unique quirks and character will surely find its way into my stash make sure to look out on model bow ray dot com to purchase ostfriedland from them direct and support this german manufacturer committed to providing high quality kits for the

[01:45:30] naval modeler we'll continue with our regular offenders over at styling models their latest release is in 1-700 scale with hms caesar the first of four planned c-class wartime emergency destroyers that starling have announced as we've come to expect this is a beautifully detailed waterline kit packed with fine detail

[01:45:54] throughout course quality doesn't come cheap and in the uk you're looking at around 40 pounds for this one but if you've built styling kits before you know exactly where that money has gone supporting your growing royal navy fleet our new 3d printed supermarine walrus float planes available in both 1-700 and 1-600

[01:46:17] scale they're also releasing twin mounted orlican 20 millimeter guns in both scales officially these represent the post-war british installations but at this size they look absolutely at home on late war royal navy and even u.s navy ships in the pacific they're affordable little upgrade sets that will undoubtedly find their way into plenty of projects moving up in size verifier have announced what could

[01:46:46] be one of the naval releases of the year a brand new 1-350th scale uss north carolina the famous bb-55 this will arrive in two versions a standard boxing and a deluxe edition which judging by verifiers previous releases will probably be absolutely packed with photo etch turned metal barrels

[01:47:11] and possibly even a 3d printed upgrade the real north carolina earned herself legendary status during the battle of the eastern solomons in august of 1942 her anti-aircraft barrage was so intense that for around seven minutes the admiral aboard uss enterprise genuinely believed she was on fire simply because of the

[01:47:35] enormous volume of smoke pouring from her guns as she engaged incoming japanese aircraft it's a wonderful piece of naval history and the verifier maintained the standards of their previous kits this promises to be an outstanding release staying with 1-350th scale ukrainian manufacturer spala continue expanding their ever-growing range of bismarck upgrade sets

[01:48:01] the latest additions include the distinctive bow breakwaters together with replacement masts covering the bridge structure main mast and the aft radar tower these upgrades just keep coming and if you've got a revel bismarck quietly sitting somewhere on your shelf of doom well it's becoming harder and harder to ignore now here's

[01:48:24] a manufacturer we haven't talked about before on beyond the box art knee omega better known for resin cockpit upgrades and ejector seats have dipped their toe into the maritime world with a rather charming one to 350th scale ocean class steam drifter from 1917 it's a 3d printed resin full hole kit made up of

[01:48:48] around 21 parts and it can be built as either a civilian fishing vessel or a wartime patrol craft one feature i'm particularly interested to see is how they've produced the resin aft sail if painted well it could become a really eye-catching centerpiece and offers something genuinely different from the usual destroyers

[01:49:11] cruisers and battleships that dominate most naval collections now this stash report wouldn't be complete without discussing the elephant in the room the lonely queen of the north the epic tear pits being released by trumpeter in the equally or striking one to two hundredth scale trumpeter first released tear pits as younger sister bismarck in 2012 which came with a one-piece lower and main hull and a one-piece main deck

[01:49:41] expect over eighteen hundred plastic parts it will be longer than a family tv once completed and complemented by four arado aircraft this is tear pits reborn not just as a commemorative build but as a statement piece the kit is expected to release in october 2026 and if tear pits wasn't easy on the eye already the box art

[01:50:08] looks exquisite too depicting the german giant in a splinter gray and blue camouflage and finally something for those who enjoy building dioramas mini art are releasing a set of one to thirty-fifth scale small wooden boats these are injection molded with the hull produced as a single piece making construction nice

[01:50:31] and straightforward the box includes two identical boats complete with oars and seating making them ideal additions to river crossings harbors dockyards or pretty much any waterside scene they'll pair perfectly with the growing range of mini art one to thirty-fifth diorama accessories and should prove popular with military modelers looking to add that extra bit of life to display

[01:51:00] so there we are whether you're building tiny destroyers mighty battleships first world war drifters or simply looking for somewhere to park a rolling boat there's certainly plenty arriving to keep maritime modelers busy and your wallets considerably lighter now then before i do any more financial damage let's head over to the world of gunpla and science fiction modeling shame over to you thanks nevs

[01:51:30] you're right then bench mates let's finish off the edition of the stash inflation report by heading into the wonderful world of gunpla mecha and all things giant robots because apparently our wallets haven't suffered quite enough already first up we've got something a little different from chinese manufacturer e li shan wong and if i butchered that pronunciation i sincerely apologize their latest

[01:51:56] release is the ultra force ubf m01 huanlin shen inspired by the chinese sci-fi animation ultra beast force now this fully articulated kit stands at around 22 centimeters tall once assembled and combines futuristic mechanical armor with design influences from the legendary quin lin which is a mythical creature

[01:52:22] symbolizing strength and protection it's certainly got a unique look that stands out from the usual gundam inspired designs and if you're after something a little different for the display cabinet this could well be worth a look now that's due in august and should come in at around 35 pounds next up good smile company continue their excellent moderoid range this time with the testa rossa the familiar knight from

[01:52:50] the legend of heroes trails of cold still now if you're a fan of the rpg series you'll instantly recognize this as one of the legendary seven divine knights standing at 18 centimeters tall this kit uses colored runners clear parts several pre-painted components meaning that you can achieve a really impressive finish straight out of the box without reaching for that paint rack now that one arrives

[01:53:17] in december for around 45 pounds now if you're more of a code gs fan premium bandai have announced the hg 135th scale xia artemis from rose of the recapture one of the clever features here is its ability to transform into its streamlined fortress mode using a dedicated replacement frame that keeps everything nice and solid once converted as you'd expect from bandai engineering looks typically

[01:53:46] impressive but that one's due in july and an expected price of around 50 pounds finally this month hasagawa are celebrating the 30th anniversary of the virtual on franchise with a welcome re-release of the one 100 vr 747 temjin type a8 the order of the white rainbow now this classic mecca still looks every

[01:54:14] bit as futuristic today as it did when it first appeared standing at just under 17 centimeters tall it's a fantastic opportunity for anyone who missed it first time around or for those that simply fancy adding a bit of mecca history to the collection that's expected in september at around 35 pounds and i suspect it'll prove pretty popular and that's it for this edition of the stash inflation report

[01:54:39] as always let us know what you've been adding to your stash or perhaps more importantly what you've been trying to hide from the other half we'll take a very short commercial break and when we return we'll sit down with john bryan a 148th post-war aircraft builder and magazine contributor don't go

[01:54:59] anywhere bench mates we'll be right back head over to modelpodcast.com and explore the best modeling podcasts available today a worldwide podcast hub curated by stuart clark from the scale model podcast

[01:55:28] joining us from the akiv in ukraine reskit ceo alexey ukhan shares the remarkable story behind one of modeling's most respected aftermarket companies during wartime right then so for this portion of the show we're going to have a conversation with john bryan scale modeler extraordinaire 148th guru

[01:55:54] writer for guideline publications on numerous subjects and other mind publications i'm sure as well john welcome back to the show thank you very much but that was definitely over flattering not at all not at all i reject most of that yeah so john in the latest episode of scale aircraft modeling you're working on a uh-1 which absolute masochist removing all the indented rivets and actually infilling with

[01:56:20] solder balls what on earth is that about yeah that's right and sufficiently masochistic that i did it twice because i did that originally on the uh-1h earlier this year and i enjoyed that so much i thought i'd do it on a uh-1n why why because i think it looks better and it's a challenge and someone kind of dared me to do it for those who can't quite visualize it most helicopter kits these days as many kits do come with

[01:56:46] indented rivets whereas unlike say jets helicopters tend to need positive rivets but most companies don't bother so if you buy a trumpeter helicopter or an air fix it'll come with loads of recess rivets which is absolutely fine and i've been building that way for a long time and i'll probably will still build some like that but there was a french modeler called fanch lubin who built a 135th scale h60 a few years ago and i think he got the idea from the far east but i might be wrong on that it might be his original

[01:57:12] idea but i noticed that he got a load of 0.3 millimeter solder balls i think they were and he was basically going along each of those little indented holes and filling it with one of these solder balls for people who don't know you can buy them on ebay or amazon or whatever they come in little vials it'll say you get 25 000 in a bottle and it looked like a tiny quantity but they're tiny balls of solder and so when you obviously put them in the hole you end up with a dome over the top

[01:57:38] which looks like well supposed to look like a positive rivet and i thought that looked absolutely mad and anyone who did that would be insane which is always a reason when i see it to do it because i think if someone else is going to be that mad about making models then i want to be that mad about it too so i thought i'd probably end up doing it at some point in the future but then last october i was at smc and i chained to a chap called andy evans who's a british modeler part of the four corners

[01:58:06] modeling club and he was doing the same thing as fancy even on another h60 again in the same scale and he was showing it to me and said it's not really that difficult and it's very therapeutic and you can get it done a lot more quickly than it appears so i kind of felt guilted into it by him really to actually give it a go and so when i started these hueys i thought it was an ideal opportunity the problem is obviously i'm working 148th which is a bit smaller than 135th and 0.3 millimeters does look

[01:58:34] a bit massive so i went all the way down to 0.2 which is still way over scale i mean i think it gives you rivets they're like one centimeter in real life but and they do look to over scale on the model but then in my opinion almost all surface detail is over scale in 148th so it's more an effect and yeah it's great i highly recommend it anyone should do it okay and you use a rather unusual adhesive yeah andy introduced me to using johnson's clear which i appreciate it's not that easy to get anymore

[01:59:01] i've got a couple of bottles and i'm sure there are other alternatives available at basically the same product but yeah just to keep it fresh a tiny tiny using the smallest brush that i've got that i'm happy to waste on johnson's clear and tiny little drop in the hole pick up one of these balls with with the brush and they kind of wick in it's quite magical to watch really okay so first tip is obviously johnson's clear so then those that don't know it is basically a floor polish wax or

[01:59:30] something like that yeah it's like a clear acrylic it's quite thin so how hardy or durable is it when you're actually handling your model yeah you have to watch that and i am very very careful it will stand up to some masking but obviously if you do a lot of handling you risk rubbing the paint off because it doesn't stick that well to metal even with a metal primer and under masking you i lost a couple which i could replace easily enough but i was pleasantly surprised it wasn't there was more

[01:59:55] durable than i thought but then i went in with very low expectations okay now obviously we've jumped forward a little bit with that article but i think it might be worthwhile actually going through your modeling past and where you actually started and you're transitioning through the hobby because it's not exactly a normal route as players say well and in some ways it is do i need to talk like a machine gun because i think everyone's going to leave for the football in about five minutes another

[02:00:19] right eight minutes but no no it's yeah yeah yeah football what's that brownie i don't intend to watch it i'll just carry on with you fair enough everyone else can go that's fine i release you all that's yeah i started modeling well i think i was about five six years old my mum bought me a spitfire from a jumble sale if you remember jumble sales came home with it my dad he passed away 10 years ago but he was just extraordinary with his ability his mechanical ability with his hands he could build

[02:00:47] anything make anything do anything and so he kind of dabbled in modeling too and i remember getting this kit and just daubing humbrel dry dark earth all over it but i was hooked from that moment on and i have never ever stopped so yeah 48 now um been at it for quite a long time when i was 16 in 1994 which is quite a scary thing to say so i just i was explaining to my daughter sorry for the aside

[02:01:14] i was listening to the car radio and when the streets have no name by you two came on the radio that song came out in 1987 if i'm not mistaken which is nearly 40 years ago and i said to you i was nine years old when that came out and the gap between that song and now is the same as the gap between then and like 1947 or 1948 it's just sorry sorry if that bores you all but this kind of thing blows my mind as to how far away that you're writing what you're saying the 1990s it's quite a long time

[02:01:42] ago we are the john we're the same i know you're not a football fan but we are the same distance now from when all the three lions song first came out and you're a 96 than they were to 1966 yeah i know it's mad isn't it let you do these calculations anyway 1904 i start for some reason i'd been building bits of everything aircraft tanks the odd ship figures and whatnot i started to focus more on aircraft particularly 172nd us navy aircraft in the early 90s hasagawa really caught my

[02:02:11] attention and they were easily available in guildford and woking where i lived in the loads of model shops there and just a complete step up in terms of what i was used to from air fix you had some of those kits which we were talking about earlier in the break and whatnot and then air fix in 1994 came out with the first buccaneer the 148th buccaneer which was a horrific kit and jonathan mock did an article in scale models international which i used to get at the time on how to build it and how to make it

[02:02:37] better and i thought that it looks difficult but that looks great obviously it's just after the gulf war it's in pink it's been on the news a lot lots of resonance with a young teenager at the time so i bought it and built it and for some reason at that time since then i have just stuck with 148th and done absolutely nothing else at all they've all been post-war military aircraft everything to be 1946 onwards and i've not duplicated anything by type designation so we were joking earlier about me

[02:03:04] building a jaguar gr1 and i've already done a 1a and i'll never build them again so that's the philosophy of this collection which i've been amassing over the last 30 years a lot of them have gone in the bin but they all exist online in photographs now and i think i stand at 180 completed fair play and all of those 148th all 148th all post-war no duplicates and so you're building the scale is your age the scale is my age yeah it is this year that's right

[02:03:31] that's right last two states i mean as of the way of my building philosophy has changed or evolved over time and chris meddings had me on his podcast last year to explain that more if anyone's interested i can't imagine why you would be but if you are that he's got a good podcast and the model philosopher the model philosopher and so the last 10 years i've kind of had other rules that i've added in so no ordnance closed canopies wings always unfolded i like to look at the lines of

[02:04:00] the aircraft this kind of thing keep it simple i used to think that made them quicker to build but that is actually a complete lie closed canopies are a nightmare yes but if they've not been designed to be closed which manufacturers generally do even so even on a tamia f4 phantom which i think is probably the best kit i've ever had the pleasure to build i still filled the seam lines and rescribe them on the canopy so talking about the jaguar issue and the scale is there a 148th

[02:04:26] vac form canopy available for it oh i don't know i seem to remember because that would actually give your scale issue of scum thickness the idea of dealing with fact for open canopies brownie you know balkan aviation used to do one for the older fixed jaguar but would it be the same size because obviously that was produced yeah hmm what in the 80s early 90s that ship has sailed for fact for

[02:04:55] canopies i'll do it if i absolutely have to but yeah sorry brownie i'm gonna leave that one alone not a problem it's just a thought with people looking at scale and the things the details we're looking at for canopy frames and things like nature these days there must be a market for a decent canopy because as you say the ones in the kit are obviously over thickness in comparison to the frames they're actually molded in everyone's going down the detail route for the end of the carriage and everything's that nature but no one's really looked at refreshing the canopy and

[02:05:25] i'm just thinking yeah well it's so difficult i mean i raised this up before i think the plastic model mojo guys asked this question you know why is 3d printing for armor kind of going leaps and bounds whereas 3d printing for aircraft kits for whole kits is actually quite uncommon or it is growing but i think the clear parts is is a really hard problem to solve people are 3d printing in clear and i had the misfortune to buy some tt model works a1 sky raiders earlier this year which come with

[02:05:52] horrendous 3d printed clear parts which i have bought falcon that vacform replacements which i'll try and adapt for the old matchbox kit but the clear part you know vacform is a horrible material to work with for canopies blending them in is an is a nightmare and what other options do you got you can do cast resin obviously and halber models are doing that and they're beautiful and there's aircraft aren't they up in scotland also is it scotland they're doing i've got some of their

[02:06:21] clear resin canopies really nice pretty labor intensive as i understand it and you know you have to do quite a lot of work to get a fairly small number of items i think so i just think it's a really difficult i think that's what makes aircraft modeling not difficult you know there's that argument about it's not about difficult but there is the clear parts are a challenge yes unfortunately always will be i think fisher models was one of the first ones to actually do cast resin

[02:06:48] canopies it's like for the t-78 hunter and the seaführer they actually did it and to be honest i think when you look at the cast resin ones they're a lot thinner than the ones you get in the rebel kit yeah they can be pretty strong and flexible as well if they get them right the halber models one which i used on the mauler that was pretty flexible pretty strong pretty robust you could really kick it about a bit john can i just ask is the canopies closed thing a rolling back to what you

[02:07:17] said about you like to enjoy the lines of the aircraft is that why or yeah is it because i don't know why canopy or is it because that's how most aircraft sit on a hard stand with the canopy closed they don't all sit there with it open i don't no i don't really have any interest in what they look like in real life right okay yeah oddly enough for a modeler i notice obviously that the vast majority of modelers do model them open and people consider the cockpit to be kind of the focal point of the

[02:07:45] model and i say that's true for myself would you kind of gravitate towards looking into that open thing yeah yeah it is your first look yeah but i kind of started thinking for a while that actually this is just becoming a habit that i've picked up i don't really like the way that it looks if i could i would make all of my models in flight funnily enough i was gonna that was what i was thinking of asking you a little bit later on if you ever considered doing that that's how they're

[02:08:10] meant to look and they look fantastic you know i built a spitfire mark 8 earlier this year and when i have it balanced on the stand there's no landing gear on it you just think it looks like it's flying and it looks amazing and then i've got to put it on undercarriage and it sits nose up and then you lose any sense of that grace of it cutting through the air in my view for the way i do things it's just impractical to display them to to make them in flight so i have to live with what i've got but

[02:08:37] closed canopies that's why i want the wings down if they've got folding wings not only a navy aircraft i tend to want control surfaces neutral unless flaps were down things like that i just like the way it i don't like open panels don't like open refueling ports all that kind of stuff that's why i don't put bombs on them as well no i'm just saying that's a really interesting outlook because yeah i thought yeah so it is an aesthetic choice and it does come back to bite me i wonder if it's the same as like

[02:09:03] as an armor modeler i tend to close everything up and unless i would never probably at this stage i would probably not scratch build an interior if it's a rye field and it's got a full interior i'd probably go right it's got it so i'm doing it but i tend to want to close everything up yeah i mean that that but then that's not a line thing but there's a couple of things there i think one is there's that old adage of you know at least i know it's there do i bother putting much effort

[02:09:32] into the cockpit well since i started publishing stuff on online and then in magazines i do put as much effort into the cockpit as if i was going to open it it doesn't make any difference and photograph it and i quite enjoy it now i used to hate it and now i love making instrument panels you kind of grow to like things just by doing them a lot of the time it also looks fantastic as well john to be fair like yeah thank you the detail is unbelievable and again he's mentioned just there you know you're

[02:09:58] not going to see it because you're covering it over but you have a reference and for those listeners head over to your website because you can see all of that effort that doesn't go to waste because you've taken the time to record it and reference it and it will never be forgotten yeah it's incredible detail that you put in thank you so yeah well done but it so is an aesthetic choice but i

[02:10:23] think sometimes it it comes back to buy me a little bit i was at smc in october as i said earlier and i've been that was my second year the first year i got into standard class in aircraft modeling in 148th and i was fortunate enough to win a gold medal the downside of that means you can't enter that class again you have to then go into the masters category and i don't really i don't consider myself a master's level modeler at all i just want to bumble along in standard so i went in with that but i didn't place in any medals and i asked for some feedback from two of the judges who are wonderful people very

[02:10:53] gracious with their time and i hugely respect their modeling but their feedback interestingly it wasn't to do with my techniques or execution they had no criticisms on that it was all to do with you've closed the canopy you've left the wings unfolded you've not put any bombs on it you've not put any removed before flight tags on it you've all these kind of decisions which i was thinking well that's interesting because those are improvements which i'm not going to make because i don't want to make that model i don't want to make the model like that i want to make the model the way that i've made

[02:11:21] it and i'll absolutely take criticism for failings at its construction and paint and all that kind of stuff definitely but it seems a bit pointless to tell me that you want me to build a different model and maybe i'm sorry i don't mean to sound difficult in that but i just thought that's an interesting thing so part of the joy of what i'm doing now is this guy's asked me to open the canopy on this model gives me a chance to do it and see what that looks like the only issue i have with open canopies

[02:11:47] is the cleaning and the maintenance of them because it's so hard especially on phantoms it's so hard to get rid of the dust because dust naturally occurs anyway that's why i prefer having but again phantoms to have the canopies closed on them is just a bit of a now has he go in the 48 scale used to give you two canopy sets a full one and one that he could open but even the full one wouldn't close it wouldn't fully butt open and you'd have gaps at the back or at the front but over time it doesn't

[02:12:16] matter how good you are at cleaning with a tamir anti-static brush or anything like that you will get dust accumulating in that cockpit and it looks like it's been sat there i would rather have them closed but like you say you go to a come yeah well the worst thing is if obviously you install them you mask them up you paint and then you don't know what it looks like until the very end i've built 11 hasagawa phantoms not all of them with canopies closed and then you get to removing the masking and if there's a problem it's too late by then occasionally you get a bit of misting on the

[02:12:45] inside and it's not paint it's like some kind of like a condensate which is there or something just creeps in or a bit of dust or a bit of swarf which somehow got in elsewhere and that's it you can't do anything by that point everything's closed up i mean you can rip them off and reinstall them but there's no way i'm doing that you know i use mig ammo ultra glue and i just put a few dobs on yeah put the canopy into place and then mask it paint it and then if there is i can obviously just

[02:13:11] peel it back give it a bit of a cleaning on the inside and just re-glue there's probably wisdom in that because i'm too much of a masochist and i fill everything with super glue and rescribe it and then it's well and true well super glue has its issues as well because if you use super glue the fumes of it can react with the plastic on the inside which i've always struggled with yeah i glue them on with tamia extra thin and then i fill the outside with super glue but there's this stuff which is deluxe materials rocket odorless oh it's not showing up on my camera anyway

[02:13:42] the problem is right you'll say it works and then you'll try it and it doesn't work but i've had good luck with this not fogging anything so far and you use it at your own risk don't don't say that i told you it was never fog but no to be honest i've been using uv resin glue ah yeah yeah because it just dries clear i think that's the way forward for a lot of things yeah i think i use super glue mixed with vms filler powder as my filler and i use super glue for

[02:14:09] nearly all construction as well but i think i need to get into not just the clear but like 3d printer resin as a filler that's an interesting one i hadn't thought before yeah oh yeah people are definitely doing that okay yeah because you set it if you put uv to it it sets instantly you're not having to wait and everything else if you can get it right to the gap and a panel line and mask it off and fill it in and then hit it with uv peel it back it should be flush right and you don't have

[02:14:37] the issues of super glue does have anything super glue can be hard super glue can fog or go cloudy super glue is very sticky which is really annoying and it'll go off when you don't want it to go off that's right that's right whereas with the resin you just yeah you wait until you put the light on it yeah i mean the kid the kids are the little poor show that's what they were using for building that 109 young callum had some and yeah literally it was done it's there and then it's incredible stuff

[02:15:04] what where did they get that from because that wasn't in our box of tricks no no no that wasn't not no that wasn't but nor was the model either but because that's the one i got stitched up for oh i see you bought your own well yeah a bit like going to a restaurant when you take your own wine the kids bought their own model very good yeah exactly yeah yeah but no that callum had some on him because he was you know they're quite often there were the boys will sit there building the model

[02:15:31] whilst at the show and yeah it's all in action and i was yeah i was taken back i thought it's brilliant stuff and yeah no marks and instant once you get the little light on it because he had a little portable uv light and yeah yeah job done brilliant so which which glue or resin was he using the stuff that boulders just put out there the clear stuff oh what manufacturer have you got there which one's that do you know what john i got this off amazon it cost me about 11 quid

[02:15:59] it's called decor okay clear and strong uv resin glue bonding joining and welding and it's odeless and anti-yellowing so obviously it does okay i've got some i've used some but i have a trouble with mine and when i hit it with the uv light it still leaves even though it goes hard there's like a really thin layer or film of liquid over it so either i've got the wrong kind of torch and that's why i'm always asking around to see what other stuff people are using upgrade your uv torch to get try

[02:16:25] and get a more powerful one and then hit it with the high intensity and it's probably just because it's doing the outside and it's not curing the inside so obviously it might just be seeping out that's exactly what happened with me yeah okay that's why with a lot of yeah there's a lot of model manufacturers that are doing and i'm not going to name them i've produced resin aircraft and then with resin undercarriage and then after you built them and you sat them down now obviously

[02:16:52] they're quite heavy and then the resin undercarriage has just gone like that like a banana because it's because it's not been fully cured in the center and to rectify that people have been drilling it out getting rid of the gubbins and uv in it and then sticking a brass rod through to keep it rigid yeah well risk it who were on our last show they've now started producing their undercarriage

[02:17:16] 148th a10 set which is basically a brass rod which you put the 3d printed parts onto to actually keep the shape i've got that set from 148th i'll only use a 3d undercarriage now if it's got metal rod reinforcement and some of the better ones will tend to come at where it replicates the oleo as well so it'd be like one one piece of aluminium tubing that goes all the way up i wish somebody were just doing me 262 frontal undercarriage correctly sorry which one me 262 because every manufacturer law

[02:17:44] the suspension is not compressed down for it to be sat on the ground it seems to be extended which it shouldn't be is so if he was going to do it in flight as in just checking off with the back wheel staying yeah i understand what you mean it's got no weight on it there's no weight on it but there seems to be every manufacturer when they're producing it as a kit version that it's they've done it as it's extended it's not compressed like it's got weight on it i'll pay attention to that i've got a

[02:18:12] hobby boss one to build one day so i will bear that in mind that is the best 48 one on the market the hobby boss me 262s are absolutely superb yeah so i understand i'll make it as an aero what is it a c92 or something like that the czech czechosavacian one yes czechosavacian one of which really useless little fact but in the center of the nacelle for the 262 you'll see a little d handle which was to

[02:18:39] actually start the petrol motor to start spinning the blades so it's literally a pull like the old lawnmowers like a lawnmower yes in the center of the nacelle and a lot of people miss that off i never knew that because i always thought the i don't like the cartridges to fire off to spin the turbine no no no no now there's something i did not know that i now know which is going into the arsenal of knowledge which is very useful every day is a learning day absolutely absolutely

[02:19:08] absolutely and for those who couldn't understand the skies that was arsenal he said i'm not one i am not scouse you keep going on that i'm scouse oh dear yeah i was getting a bit confused by that but you probably are confusing quite a lot of american listeners into thinking that he is scouse no apparently i'm scottish according to the americans rob rev yes yeah i heard yeah is what i'm going to be called from now on bargain mcbalders anyway going back to your conversation reference

[02:19:37] canopies the mauler yeah that was a nice open canopy on that finam finish model yeah so how about models as i said earlier small ukrainian company and the guy's been email messaging me recently really nice and chap andre and he was explaining because i had some troubles with that model i got an extremely early molding i ordered it on the day that it was released and then it came quickly and then they had some problems and there was a gap and people didn't get them so the fuselage i had some trouble getting together as it came from the box it needed a decent amount of clamping and glue

[02:20:06] he said that was due to some issues they had early on to subsequent if you've got one subsequent boxings were improved but the issue with the canopy he said was that they made a mistake with the master for the buck for the molding and it ended up too small so they're aware that you can't fit the canopy closed so hey you just have to suck it up i mean i never expected to be able to build a model of that kit in of that aircraft in my lifetime there's no way anyone's going to wake a 148th scale

[02:20:32] martin mauler no one's ever heard of it disaster of an airplane but absolutely fascinating i mean it is absolutely huge it's much much bigger than a skyrailer for example and that's on resin under carriage but he's impregnated metal into it i will bring it to telford but whether it survives the m6 and m52 or whatever it is through birmingham i don't know good luck with that switch of the joints

[02:20:56] in the motorway yeah i know the stress of the driving that motorway to and from telford yes i get that it's a bit of a mad concoction that one isn't it because he's got a bit of a p-47 bit of a birka bit of a skyraider it's a very unusual aircraft yeah it's huge it's got a lovely spinner and obviously if you like hanging bombs off it you can really go to town with it i think

[02:21:21] it holds an unofficial record for the heaviest payload from a single engine air prop aircraft off a carrier or off a runway something like that must have some horsepower though yeah there's some promotional shots of it loaded up with torpedoes i can't i think it carry five maybe something like that they look quite impressive and the kid itself is to say it's mixed media is unusual the best car straten i have ever seen except on a par with hypersonic models i don't know if people are familiar

[02:21:48] with hypersonic jeffrey out of he used to be a telford in person when he lived in germany and now he's out of japan i had a stand there but for example his three engines for the a3 sky warrior are absolutely incredible but again halberd i just unbelievable quality to the surface detail but also they've included 3d printed for the wheelbase yeah which are a bit of a pain they do fit well but they fit like 97 well which you know is really good but it's just that three percent takes some work but again for a kit the site that size the big

[02:22:17] advantage you've got over the cast resin is no layer lines anywhere i mean surface smoothness is unbelievable wow whereas i say layer lines are a recurrent problem with all manufacturers and i think manufacturers have a problem i mean some are better than others i think hypersonic again is probably leading the charge on that and other people like anish but if you're a big manufacturer i think you do have a trade-off to make between how much product you make and the quality of the product obviously if you're a big manufacturer you need to make a lot of products and so you can't afford to

[02:22:44] have your printer printing them really really slowly at a really really high resolution and some companies which i won't name on the podcast i think are taking shortcuts on there and when their products come out they are more layered than they should be but maybe that's what they've got to do to make it economically viable oh alexi was saying on the last one from umres kit that they've got 200 printers yeah and they're actually bringing out 500 plates of product a day which as obviously most

[02:23:10] people aware if you didn't hear the episode please go back and listen to it because it was absolutely fascinating to hear a company that's literally operating underneath flying missiles and bombs and drones etc yeah and they're not a company which i was going to name i don't but i will i'll give them some more air time because in that interview which you had with them they mentioned that they once made a product which was so difficult that on the back the reverse side of the some of the

[02:23:36] components they wished the modeler good luck and said you know good luck with this and that was for the uh1 d stroke h huey so i had that and i installed it and you do need a lot of luck but fortunately there's a hammerhead models as a youtube channel installed one a while ago and showed how difficult it was so forearmed with that information i went into it and it's a very difficult item to install if you want to see what it looks like it's actually appeared in the last issue of air modeler which is in

[02:24:05] there but fantastic quality product what was really great there was i lost one of a very small item a seat part and i couldn't find it anywhere so i messaged them saying you don't have to have any lying around do you you could just send me a spare i'll pay and all that kind of stuff and they said no we haven't but what we have got is we've got the cad and so what we'll do is we'll 3d print that path for you and we'll send you that for free and they did and that was amazing i thought that was fantastic customer service i want to really give them props for that i hope that they will release

[02:24:35] item in future because it will be an awful lot easier and i'll happily build it again need a uh-1d how many helicopters have you got still left in the stash or the list you're going to go for you seem to be going down helicopter route at the moment with the exception of the jag i've got a stash of 240 i think i've got 50 helicopters okay well at least the airfix seeker will keep you busy with the rivets yeah well brownie how much resin did best kick all through a month was it one tonne the ones it wants on a month yes they've got six months they've got six tons in store

[02:25:04] there's mind bogging in there yeah great customer service and as they said they get 20 issues a month or request for assistance yeah so it just shows you the quality of the work if they're getting 20 out of that lot they're doing something right but going back and turn the clock back to china oh i wasn't expecting you to say that ah well we might as well go in a completely different

[02:25:29] direction than that you went to china for a while yeah and you started off if my memory serves me right not actually taking any modeling kit out there yeah so 2006 do you want me to just go through that briefly yeah yeah please 2006 my wife and i moved to china we just got married a year before and we went to be missionaries actually and we went for two years originally and then came back to have our first child for a year and then went back again for another few years after that so after that

[02:25:57] first time i didn't think i was going to be able to do any modeling over there i couldn't see that it's happening we're going to a big city but it's right in the middle of china which is why i find the weather now not hot you know 30 degrees is oh i might put a jumper on so the weather here has been brilliant and i also learned how to model in very high temperatures as well without aircon or a fan but that which kind of prejudges what i was talking about because arrived with nothing but then very quickly discovered they didn't have very much to do in the evenings and so i thought i really need

[02:26:23] to start modeling again so i asked my brother and sister back in the uk to send me a load of stuff you know they sent johnson's clear through the post an airbrush and bits and pieces i sourced loads of paint from japan which is why i got into lacquers for the first time and the big thing i didn't have was a compressor and i needed a compressor obviously to power the airbrush and we were in a city it's a big city like seven or eight million people but almost no foreigners at all like maybe at that time a thousand non-chinese and most of them would have been from japan and korea or whatnot didn't speak any

[02:26:53] chinese but rapidly learning and trying to find someone who knew what a compressor was that i was talking about wasn't that easy so one day i said to my wife there must be somewhere in the city that sells compressors so we got on our bikes very hot day very very humid extremely humid and cycling around eventually well the way things work in places like that i don't know it's like now but you would find a whole street that sold one thing and it wouldn't be available anywhere else in the city so eventually we found the street that sold compressors and like this is a big industrial thing

[02:27:21] you know a massive i don't know 15 liter tank or something like that with wheels on the back a carry handle to hitch it up on the front so i thought okay we can't carry this back on our bikes we'll leave our bikes here jump on a bus take it back on the bus and we'll come back our bikes later on it's probably five or six miles from where we're living so we jumped on this bus these are proper agricultural buses with only a few seats real swinging around the corners having to hang on and at the back with this compressor obviously it went around the corner at one point and the

[02:27:47] compressor fell over and landed on my wife's toe big toe and yeah she nearly passed out with the pain so fortunately that wasn't too far from our destination got off we lived on the sixth floor at that time with no lift so i was gonna have to carry this compressor up those stairs as well but obviously my main concern was the fact that she was on the verge of fainting from feeling the pain needed something too cold to put on it so i ran into a little shop there everywhere like a mini mart

[02:28:13] they sell milk in bags there because milk is not very common to get a bag of milk put it on there she recovered eventually got the compressor up all of those flights of stairs installed it and i had a compressor at the end of the day but it did cost her toenail so she sacrificed for my modeling hobby and for that i am eternally grateful and how long does she actually remind you about it for afterwards oh no no no she's not like that and the toenail did grow back eventually eventually okay so you said

[02:28:41] you actually discovered lacquers when you're out there what do you use these days for painting yeah mr color is what i started on eventually i found the model shop in the city jangzhou where we were living again that was a weird story i found a magazine in a magazine stand magazine stands every chinese magazine called moishie which means model world and what they were doing it turned out was they were taking articles from british modeling magazines and then translating them into chinese and just reproducing them and i knew this because i was getting modeling

[02:29:08] magazines sent my parents kindly send them to us every month and i eventually remember emailing gary hatcher who was at sammy at the time say are you aware that they're just taking your articles translating them and then just completely reproducing them on better quality paper but no i wasn't aware of that at all but one of these magazines in the back had a list of you like a classified directory obviously this is for all of china said there's a model shop in this city where i am living didn't again really speak or read chinese so i thought i'll do it i'll take this magazine jump

[02:29:35] into a taxi point to it and say i want to go here so i did that he drove quite a long way through you know four five six miles something like that and eventually it became clear he didn't know where he was going and the problem with addresses in china is they're not as clear-cut as they are in this country with a postcode and address you you know it you're going to end up but it doesn't quite work like that so eventually he stopped on the street and we ended up talking to these locals and a crowd gathers and then someone says oh there's a phone number on there why don't you call the phone number

[02:30:02] so they called the phone number and the bloke who owned the model shop then got in a van and drove to where i was and picked me up and took me to his model shop so again that's customer service for you but they were selling exclusively mr color lacquers no other paints so that's what i had and i said i got some from japan so i was forced into using lacquers and after discovering you needed to thin them a lot more than i thought you did and going through a whole that you know where you airbrush cobwebs and

[02:30:27] all that kind of stuff once you dial it in and get used to it blacker paint is just absolutely magical so i i use various brands mrp but mr color mainly because later on when we lived in china we lived somewhere else that was a very short distance from a much better model shop a walking distance and i used to walk there every week and buy the next pot in their range whatever it was just as an excuse to go so i've acquired a lot of mr color paint mainly for gundam models that i will never build

[02:30:53] but hey i've got it okay so you're saying that out in china it was very humid how do you counter that a lot of water traps humid humid in the summertime water trap on the probably two water traps on the compressor i have never had water come through my airbrush ever so i don't know if that's just luck or whatever and really thinning the paint mr leveling thinner has obviously got the retarder in it so that's what i don't have anything else to say other than that what's beautiful about the moment

[02:31:20] around here is it's a really dry heat but obviously in the wintertime in china where we were it's between minus five and zero and extremely dry i wouldn't rain for four or five months no precipitation maybe some snow so you kind of get the extremes between very cold and very dry and very hot and very humid i'm guessing you use clear gloss well that wasn't available when i was in china we left there in 2013 and i didn't become aware of gx100 and that till later so i was actually using johnson's clearwiles in china which is not a product i'd recommend now for that purpose but to be honest

[02:31:50] it was perfectly fine for what i was using it for then but yeah i don't tend to gloss models unless i can avoid it so the when huey got glossed and doesn't look great for it to be honest the mauler i wanted gloss because i think glossy sea blue should be fairly glossy oh yes definitely but aircraft are difficult to do glossy because polishing is hard because surface detail is a nightmare and i don't gloss before decals unless i for some reason decide to for other reasons but you don't need to

[02:32:15] with lacquers at all yeah i mean decaling is voodoo there are no rhyme or reason to even decals off the same sheet go down differently even if you do exactly the same thing so i'm not going to pretend i've got a method or whatever you always hope for the best okay you mentioned about polishing what's your process for getting that gloss finish like in the glossy sea blue yeah yeah sometimes it works quite well like i did a bearcat where i was pretty pleased with it so i will spray on the

[02:32:45] gloss which i'll probably will use mysticolor gx 100 wait quite a long time for it to go hard and then flat it down with i like infini sanding products you know the people know infini the sponges and the zebra sticks and the matador sticks and whatnot so the sponge material i've got the films i've got the sponges i like all of that stuff the 2500 grit will do a reasonable job of flatting and then i use the 8000 buffer because i think that gives i don't want it looking like it's a car in a car

[02:33:14] showroom that's not what it's right but the 8000 buffer i think works quite well but it's always a nightmare around raised surface detail and stuff like that okay so do you actually use it dry or do you use it wet when you're actually flatting it down i should use it wet but i'm lazy and i use it dry most of the time well if you get a result like that on the mauler with actually doing it dry yeah i'm definitely going to change my problem technique the big problem with all of that is the sand the clear

[02:33:42] will obviously give a sanding residue which then collects in recess panel lines yeah and you can like spray it out wash it out rub it scrub it out but i always find there's some that just won't go and then i end up using a bit of oil paint wash or something like that but that's my main issue with polishing is the residue gets stuck where i don't want it okay so sticking with the mauler because it was an exceptional build and again it was on the front of a scale aircraft modeling recently and the detail

[02:34:10] the article inside is a fantastic read how did you actually get the exhaust stains what process do you use for those did i do exhaust stains no it's where you have i've built that several models ago i'm struggling to remember what i did with it i think my state process for exhaust staining is highly thin paint and spraying it through a water custom micron i am not very good at exhaust stains and it's something i really want to improve at so i haven't settled on a process yet but at the moment i'm

[02:34:38] generally airbrushing stuff i'm not using pastels or oils or anything like that i mean the mauler thank you for saying it looks good brownie but it was done in about three and a half weeks and you can hide quite a lot of stuff in a very dark blue finish so you know if you're saying that's not perfect then it's definitely not perfect so dan you do your room weathering techniques with oils

[02:35:01] yet compared to using an airbrush how do you get a simulator and exhaust in comparison to what john was just saying i think i would probably use the airbrush to do the base of it but and then maybe go in with some oils and i use a filbert brush for blending it's incredibly soft it's almost like makeup

[02:35:25] brush sort of fineness and how silky it is and it's beautiful for blending oils and soot stains and stuff like that the the magic tamia weathering sets you know the little makeup ones they are i refuse to use them i just refuse to use pigments because i'm scared of them if they're well my i don't know what's happened to mine but it's gone really really hard the actual texture inside it's almost dried out

[02:35:53] and i think it's better now than it was when you first get them they're almost too soft right the little pigment powder or a bit less oily now you've got it yeah a lot less oily it's almost like the oil is dried out but with my oils i always leach out the linseed oil anyway out of them although i was saying that the abtai lung oils i'm not sure if they've been discontinued now what's happening with those they seem to have a lot lower linseed oil content from the start it depends on the color

[02:36:22] anyway yeah because i've got a lot of them and some of them is like it's only linseed oil pulling out of them the opening and others are extremely dry and you have to press really hard just to get the paint out of the tube so i think very dry yeah do you know if i have been discontinued john or not no idea i expect mine to last a really long time i do use oils quite a lot and what i would really like as if maybe on the benchmates page or you can send me a photograph of the brush that

[02:36:48] you're using because i've got loads of brushes and finding one which is of the right softness is actually really difficult you don't want it too scratchy and you don't want it too soft that it does nothing you've got to find it the right balance so i'd really love to know what you're using i will do i'm sure it's good to feel but they're not discontinued down they're still going oh yeah yeah but the branding would be really useful to know which company it is okay right i'll check

[02:37:12] okay okay struck them over they took and taken over yeah i know it's an ak product it's been like that for a while but as you just go back to exhaust stains well actually i now remembered one of the things i had been doing more recently i did this on a edward spitfire mark 8 which hasn't been published in a magazine but it's been part of the asian air arms sig that i belong to on their newsletter and for that i used liquitex inks which i thinned down with tamia x20a and that gives you

[02:37:38] loads of transparency so you don't worry about going too dark too soon i think i've been a bit too subtle but the other advantage is you can then dampen a brush with some x20a like really lighten it and then do that vertical dragging through it because you know you often get that kind of rain marking the vertical streaking through the exhaust stains and that's yeah just agitates it doesn't it agitates it enough just to try to drag it out yeah yeah that's right that's right that's right so

[02:38:06] that's a technique which i am wanting to develop more i know other people are much better at it than i am but yeah something to definitely explore more just thinking about the pastels and the aversion to actually using them what do you have a mule that you use for testing no don't believe in testing right on well there's the gauntlet thrown down then life's too short for testing so the pastels are because i find they can get out of control i did use them many years ago and you can end up

[02:38:35] with fingerprints you end up on your fingers you end up while you don't want them and then there's fixing them and i know compared to the 1990s there are a lot more materials now for fixing pigments than there were back then but still there's just part of me which it just doesn't form part of my workflow i do use oils quite a lot i started experimenting with markers maybe shane knows more about this they're gun damn markers they're called they're kind of a weathering marker they come with like a blending pen as well they're not acrylic paint i think they're an

[02:39:01] enamel based product they're called real touch markers and they're not for like doing base coats and stuff they're for weathering and then you get this pen which has got like a solvent in it which is the same design of pen yeah i've got some here in my little bag i'll uh should dig some out yeah but yeah i think to be fair it depends on the type of exhaust stain you're going for as well doesn't it i think because i yeah yeah absolutely i quite like using the tamia like weathering kits but

[02:39:31] sometimes you actually can't just be a bit of pastel scraped off in a little bit of washing up liquid and you know away you go yeah i'm absolutely not disputing that they work people really make them work it's just whether i want to wait or not on these ones yeah real touch markers which is kind of like yeah yeah that's right that's the one yeah like which is like you sort of the but like you rubber effectively you know you rub that over and you can use it on your panel lining pens the panel lining pens come in all sorts of shapes and sizes as well and if you want a fine line if you do if

[02:39:58] you've got like a really small panel line that you want to effectively draw in and there's also the thicker ones which like you just described there john you know they're yeah minor dual tipped like whatever yeah that's what these ones are yeah you can either side yeah it's called a shade off the shade off marker anyway yeah i haven't used that much but there's something to explore as well but i mean actually the only thing i do testing for is foil if i'm falling an aircraft i will do quite a

[02:40:26] lot of testing on that because foil is unbelievably unforgiving as in a complete aircraft being covered or just panels yeah okay a complete aircraft ah interesting so i've done that three times and every time i say i will never do that again and i almost certainly will do it again and with the on that john i did a full foil of a b25 mitchell oh man that's massive never again yeah well i'm building a b25 at the end of the year but it won't be it will be natural metal but it will not be foiled

[02:40:56] but i probably will foil a starfighter again in the future oh you can't beat a natural metal phone starfighter yeah well natural metal i mean it's it's a horrible material to work with and it never looks quite as good as it should but i still am it's like a moth to a flame just drawn to it as maybe next time it will look better yeah i mean for those lacquer painters you can give it a bit of a polish but you can't do if it's acrylic or anything like that because i did a bit of research

[02:41:21] you can use the old tamia like polishing compounds that you'd normally like if you're doing a seam run on the canopy you can use some of that on a bit of lacquer paint and it just gives it a little bit of a buff but that is it's never quite the same as doing it foil no i mean because obviously mr color do the super metallic range which i like very much and that's unbelievably shiny really shiny yeah i think and i i that's my kind of would be go-to for a natural metal if i'm not

[02:41:50] going to use foil but of course then they do the other range as well they're the two numbers like 218 i think is the aluminium one and they're buffable yeah you've got tamia's got the mirror paint coming out as well i mean right okay yeah but the point with the buffable is you can't then weather them or anything and i've got the sms oh that's yeah and on sms is chrome pack i bought that recently that's outstanding that's as good as the super metallic in my opinion the chrome shades

[02:42:16] and they set it with a chrome sealer which is just like a clear acrylic which it does work really well but it will always kill some of the shine it just does i was just gonna say does it change it a little bit a little bit tamia's lacquer sparkling silver is a chrome and that's nice is that durable yes very durable tamia lacquers are super durable they are rock hard when they go off so that's just

[02:42:43] part of the regular lp range yeah it's i think it's lp 40 no 48 is microsoft i think it's 72 i think sparkling silver it's called but when you do that it's absolutely but yeah the super metallics are very very durable indeed but the sms ones the ultimate chromes they're the alcohol based ones so they will just rub off eventually if you don't seal it with something yeah i mean the

[02:43:12] ouchie van der rosten polishing powders your powders i again have used that and one point i thought maybe i'll try doing this over an entire airframe it's very strongly dependent upon the color of the base coat underneath but again it starts getting everywhere and you end up finding it on things that you don't want it on yeah i was shown a trick by a guy that built he only ever built 30 second

[02:43:36] scale english electric lightnings oh wow yeah and he would gloss black them and then we use the ouchie van der rosten with a woman's makeup brush and we're just dab it and then we're just work it and work it and when you see it change it was unbelievable absolutely unbelievable i have yeah does it go sufficiently light or is it quite a dark color or did you manage to get it to go quite a bright

[02:44:00] like an aluminium we went it went like a super polished aluminium well right okay yeah well yeah natural metal finishes hey don't we love them i hate them i hate them mustang with the bare metal finish just kills my mojo i was selling these a few episodes back i can do a mustang because it just kills my mojo yeah i heard i do listen to all of them i heard i mean i've done that finished jersey jack i mean the thing is like i said i exclusively paint in

[02:44:29] acrylics you just cannot get that that real shiny finish but what ends up resorting with all the mustangs i've done actually is they've gone the other way so if you look at a lot of reference pictures i know you're saying about the bare metal finishes that is lighter but in some of the pictures almost appears darker so i've gone like a dark aluminium for what kind of suggests is a natural metal finish and then on the wings i've gone for like a standard aluminium so you can get that contrast and it seems to come out okay i mean i'm sure some of our losers might disagree

[02:44:57] but i'm happy with it and that's kind of all that matters it is all that matters and that's actually a really important point i think because we can easily get sucked into whether it looks realistic or not and if that's something that's really really important to you then fine but like we were talking about earlier with the seam line along the front of a spitfire wing shouldn't be there i don't care ultimately you know if i was building one of those tanks and the seam line shouldn't be around the wheel or whatever i would have taken it off because i think it would look

[02:45:25] better and all i care about is whether i think it looks better oh it matters and ultimately i want to say i am making a model and a model is inherently compromised and probably for natural metal finishes even with aluminium foil it still doesn't look right it's either too shiny or not shiny enough the textures in it are not right to scale it goes a bit bumpy whatever it might be and so so i'll make my peace with that compromise because it's a model and the model is not the real

[02:45:54] thing shrunk down models by definition are simplifications that's the definition of a model yeah really good point definitely well on that point i think what we will do is draw close to it for this confound part of the conversation and we will get you back on again in a couple of episodes time and we will continue because what you've actually covered in with some of the tips and tricks you've actually come up with this evening you're an absolute gold dust and i've just sent the

[02:46:20] link to your website which is johnbryan.com unusual spellings of john and brian everyone is dyslexic with my name and will want to call me john byron so julia oscar november bravo romeo yankee oscar november.com indeed and i've just sent them the link for the f94 starfire you did from kitty hawk yeah that's not very good because the foil went down on native kitty hawk plastic which i didn't

[02:46:47] polish and as with most is it called edm molding tooling the electronic discharge whatever it is yeah it leaves a pitted surface doesn't it so actually in many ways a lot of more modern kits from the manufacturers which are really good like edward the surface of the plastic is still not as smooth as what has a go doing in the 1990s because the method of tool production is different and that's a trade-off we're willing to make because that's what they've got to do to be economically

[02:47:13] viable and for most of the time it doesn't matter but if you get something like a kitty hawk f94 starfire that surface is fairly rough and i didn't polish it out so it means that the bare metal foil i actually used the branded stuff on that one rather than kitchen foil which i tend to use showed up some of that surface texture so yeah not brilliant and all kinds of things wrong with that kit but there's on my website if anyone's interested the f84e thunderjet it's a revel kit with well i did

[02:47:40] a lot of checkers around the nose and the tail that's foil and that's the closest i've got to being satisfied with that that got that did get gold at telford for 148th and that was out of the box yeah no surprise there it's quality so and it got gold all of a sudden not because it's the best but because that model screams look at me and pay some attention to me and i think that's where i'm going to win to medals yeah this is the do go to website just have a look at the interior pictures

[02:48:09] because they're so worth it i mentioned it earlier on in the conversation but you know you're always going to have those as reference so yeah yeah i do like that that's why i do it and occasionally this is really sad i think this came up on the plastic model mojo about do you ever look at your finished models and most of us can't display them they're in the loft or whatever but if you can get them online somehow then you can go back and look at them whenever you want and if you're trying to get to sleep and you can't sleep then go back and look at your old models and send you to sleep

[02:48:36] now that was one thing i was going to ask you about your website very quickly because you i seem to remember you saying in the past that you always associate each model you build with an event or something that's happened at the time of the build yeah so one thing i didn't say is i build with two exceptions i build every more i finish every model i start and i only ever do one at a time so at any point in my life i'm only working on one thing and it was from beginning to end

[02:49:04] in 1995 i failed to finish a revel f14 and last year i failed to finish a revel a6 there's a theme there old revel for good reason of revel but yeah so for me it just kind of tracks life so yes that's right it's a way of tracking time for me as well so why don't you actually put that memory onto your website oh i'd know that had never occurred to me before mainly because it's personal probably

[02:49:31] fair enough okay as i said john thank you very much your time we will get you back on because i can see the amount of emails we're going to get from our bench mates talking about what you've actually discussed this evening it's been well that's very generous of you but i doubt i've got much more interesting to say but i have really really enjoyed chatting with you guys well i want you back on john i want to speak to you more yeah i want you back on because i want to continue some other's bits so definitely most definitely yeah but i will now admit i've been sat in a room with

[02:50:00] a shuttle and now i am hot and there it comes yeah and you can go and watch the football john thank you very much for your time yeah both for yourself well thank you thanks for all mine hopefully we'll catch up with you at talford and most probably i know nevs and myself are going to smc yeah very much the intention i've got a lot going on in my life which means i'm not making plans in far into the future but my stated intention is definitely to be at smc and telford all weekend that's what i usually do

[02:50:27] brilliant okay we'll hopefully catch up with you there for now thank you very much john and we'll speak to you again thank you cheers john cheers bye-bye cheers bye-bye coming up in episode 33 we are joined by michael blaylock from patriot models in the usa

[02:50:56] to talk about the new veterans modeling initiative that brings us to an end for episode 32 of beyond the box art so from dan thanks benchmates from boulders au revoir benchmates from shane

[02:51:22] take care benchmates i'm from john bye-bye from john that'll do your chinese list will understand why i was talking about this no there's multiple and never has obviously fallen off after all the um boost he's been having he disappeared off the call because obviously it fell out from mexico from myself thank you very much for listening and we'll speak to you again in a fortnight bye-bye for now